


symbols.

by EilyenMay



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical Hetalia, Historical References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EilyenMay/pseuds/EilyenMay
Summary: A superpower is always quiet in their home. And while we hear everything outside it, we don’t hear things within. In three short drabbles, we see how the people that lived with the eastern world’s greatest actually saw him.The perspectives of the fallen, the grappling, and the victor.





	1. hammer.

The republic of the great city  
Will not want to consent to the great severity:  
King summoned by trumpet to go out,  
The ladder at the wall, the city will repent.  
  
\- 50, Century III

  
If admitted, there was indeed something that Gilbert truly envied about humans. They always had their birthdays to look forward to. More likely than not, someone would approach them on the day, greet them, hug them, compliment them. There was always a little sunshine woven into a birthday.   
  
That is if people remember.   
  
It was the morning of 18th January 1961. A birthday.   
  
A German was spending his 700-somethingth birthday in a Russian town; an insulting position, no doubt. He had spent more time than truly needed at the train station, just because the rest of the day was approaching a bit too quickly. The important thing was that it wasn’t Moscow or Leningrad. Those cities would’ve been too crowded and too loud for this kind of peace.   
  
After the pensive moment, Gilbert ducked into one of the lower, more impoverished suburbs near the station. Every measure needed to make sure it was inconspicuous was taken. With so much coordination and pain, it was made to seem perfectly natural.   
  
Gilbert spat at the ground, but there was no release from the bitter as hell taste of Russia. Everyone was drowning in their own silent views on life, and even the little kids seemed to be aware that they were in a cage.   
  
There was something that had to be accepted. Not everyone had the balls to invite ten enemies to a meeting and still be the most fearless person in the room. As Gilbert let himself into the broken down office building, he took a moment to keep an ear out for chatter. Before every meeting, there was at least some amount of gossip and the slightest bit of joking as well.   
  
Here, there was silence, which meant that their host had arrived. What a shame. It would’ve been nice to get a few wishes before the meeting. But there was a second meaning to the silence. It meant that somehow, he was late. And that was impossible.   
  
He had to painfully ignore the mysterious corridors of the house that led further into the secrets of the country. He could name many that would die to know what hid in these files and boxes on iron shelves and more that would kill for the same.   
  
If there was anything more painful than being denied what you desperately craved to know, it was walking past it by your own accord.  As the smallest expressions of frustrations, he made sure that he made as much noise as he could while ascending. He even did a little tapdance on each step. The meeting would no doubt hear him so.   
  
While approaching, the sound of monotone, accented Russian became louder and louder. A woman, so it could only be one person. God, didn’t it pain him to see her this way, in this world. She was worth so much more.

  
Knowing full well that there would be no going back when it came to the meeting room, Gil decided to pause for a bit. There was no pressure; nothing that could force him in. In fact, he was earlier than usual. Almost half an hour. Then again, so was the host, and perhaps that son of a bitch had started proceedings already.   
  
The bottom of the wooden door scratched woefully against the ground, and the person who was speaking fell silent.   
  
“Gilbert,” said Erzsebet.   
  
“German Democratic Republic,” said Ivan.   
  
The man addressed ducked into a corner, his first instinct to fall out of sight. Not quite so simple when there were some ten pairs of eyes looking his way, all somewhat bewildered. They wore their uniforms, badges neatly pinned. He wore a coat of his own, his own badges at home. They all carried long manila folders. He carried his fists.   
  
There wasn’t much that couldn’t be noticed about him.   
  
At least, for the uniforms, there was an explanation. While everyone else surely kept their war clothes neatly pressed in the cupboard, waiting for the fated day, Gilbert’s had been ‘mysteriously’ burnt in a large pile in his fireplace. No one in his neighbourhood suspected a thing because he was always drunk off his ass and burning something or the other.   
  
It was just that this time, it was something he truly wanted to.   
  
The folders, however, were a different and tougher issue. It wasn’t in his hands to burn them. In fact, if anything, he was simply the postman to them. The records of outputs, and births, and deaths, and yields, and innumerable other things that mattered. The only things that mattered to him now, and he had forgotten the folders at home.   
  
Certainly wasn’t a conscious decision. Not another expression of rebellion. But perhaps there was a sense in his being, rebellious in and of itself, that refused to take it. A subconscious.   
  
God, he really hated that word.   
  
So he waited. Waited for someone to say something about how there was nothing in that worn out satchel of his; clearly too small for a whole folder. He waited till it was pointed out. Instead, the host waved a hand towards Erzsebet. The plainest of gestures for her to resume.   
  
Eventually, it would sting. No such show of rebellion went unpunished. He had argued with himself in his glasses of liquor, wondering if he should ever take another chance after the burning of propaganda posters in November.   
  
Ivan himself wore a large military hat, not even bothering to take it off indoors. And if Gilbert knew him at all he knew that it wasn’t really because of any kind of impoliteness. It was cold, and there was something he wanted to hide. Naturally, he didn’t want any innocent mortals with weak hearts to view his face. The hat combined with the thick scarf-   
  
The host couldn’t be read. Perhaps for the better.   
  
Once again, they started using the same words for the same things, which were exactly what everyone wanted to hear, really. The crops were alright, and the industries were booming. People were happy. There was nothing of note to address. Once again, the great socialist utopia had delivered itself. All was well.   
  
Didn’t even seem to be a point to calling them in one spot and even going through with this procedure. It was just a formality.   
  
There wouldn’t be any true progress in the room for some time now, so Gilbert thought it only prudent that he zoned out for a bit. Sleep without closing his eyes, just staring at the portrait of some or the other dead king. He had very recently discovered that this indeed was a skill. To ignore.    
  
Not before long, the words had stopped. Oh, thank God. Perhaps he could finally sleep now. A train somewhere had started, and the gentle rocking of the wheels was the perfect sound to relax to.   
  
Until his ribs were poked by an extremely intrusive pair of fingers. Feliks always took a specific sort of pleasure in doing that. Like some sort of drunkard, he swiped at the unwelcome hand and fell against the adjacent wall in drowsiness. For a moment it seemed that he could fall back into a sleep.   
  
But he knew that there were so many pairs of eyes that were all directed to him, like sniper’s rifles. He had to make a statement, he supposed. He had to talk.   
  
But the talking was immediately done by someone else, for better or worse.   
  
"Where are your papers?"    
  
Even if there was a question addressed directly to him, the host would not look at him directly. Son of a bitch; he looked into his own papers that, no doubt, didn't have anything of value in them. Maybe he just didn't want to meet the German’s eyes. And if this was out of fear, then Gilbert was truly touched. Regardless, there was a question that had to be answered, and a simple ‘fuck you’ wouldn’t exactly suffice here.   
  
“My papers,” he repeated foolishly. “They’re at home.”   
  
He told the truth. Out of all the godforsaken things he could’ve made up to cover his ass, he told the truth. And the truth was always punished. Some people at the table even winced, and turned away from him, knowing what was to come. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to add a phrase, laugh about it. But the moment he tried to open his mouth, to say anything-   
  
Once again, it was said for him.   
  
“I assume these papers didn’t walk out of your bag, hop onto a train and head back to Berlin?”   
  
As far as Gilbert could employ his keen sense of emotion, the host was certainly not trying to make a ruse. In fact, he probably wasn’t aware of how humorous he sounded.  There was no chance that a superpower couldn’t know that this was not, indeed, a mistake or a humble error. No one knew him to be a slacker in his work. However, all knew him to be a little shit whenever it was most inconvenient. In hindsight, he should’ve taken the papers with him. Would’ve served for a few extra minutes of defiance here, and then a cop-out later, satisfying both of them for a little bit. Alas, no. It was far too late.   
  
So he said nothing and waited to see how dangerous the situation would become.   
  
It was as though everyone else knew what a storm this was going to become from the very start, so they all could shift uncomfortably in their chairs and fail to meet the eyes of either the host or of the belligerent. In fact, it seemed that he was the last person to speak, so they began to pack up their things and move away from the table. None of them would dare to even remove an arm from their chairs, naturally, until they were spoken to and given formal permission. It was just how it worked.   
  
Seemed like they were pretty lucky, because the host did a quiet round of eye contact, and that was enough to let everyone know. A lot could be said about the order in which they left. Naturally, the first to leave was Feliks, and from the few seconds that Gilbert saw his face, there was a clear look of panic, the kind that you see on a dog whenever you have a club raised. Perhaps the room was just too suffocating for him. Or perhaps it was that two of his worst enemies that were going to be facing off, and he was a little too used to getting caught in the crossfire.   
  
Yekaterina stayed the longest, surprisingly. As if she really wanted to say something to her brother, she stood aside as Tolys, Raivis and Eduard left as one collective. Nat seemed to show no signs of wanting to leave, and she edged her chair closer and closer to the host as people left. When Erszi began her slow pace towards the stairs, Gilbert let his hand brush hers for a moment, and she noticed it. But she looked at her hand, not at him.   
  
Perhaps it truly was a little too much to expect from her in these times. She was the same, regardless of the strange solidarity that was expected from subjects under a tyrant. Quite possibly, she thought his rebellion was unnecessary, or foolish. Both judgements hurt. Regardless, everyone soon left, except for Nat, who was pushed off her brother’s arm onto her chair soon enough. Even Katya, showing him a tight-lipped smile, escorted her sister out of the room, their heels clattering on the stairs for what seemed like forever.   
  
The host had the politeness to close the door after them, as the German scurried out into the centre of the room. He was alone. And while he couldn’t, without an obscene amount of force, die, he could most certainly be beaten senseless as a buildup. He was ready, with his hands balled into fists behind his back and ready to strike.   
  
“You didn’t leave?” said Ivan, and the realisation that he could’ve just fucking run was dawning on him.   
  
He hated brave-hearts. He also hated himself, so perhaps it was for the best.   
  
"I wanted to talk to you," he replied. Something to be proud of, he supposed; it was a half truth, the best he could do. For the past several months, a line of bricks was building itself higher and higher past his balcony, and it felt like it would not stop even at the sky. Women were pushed out through its small entrances, and men dragged in as they cried for their beloveds.   
  
Where would the bricks end was his question and last concern. For some time, he’d taken the risks of sneaking out from the blind spots and hoping to get a ride to somewhere else. But there was always the pulling. He would move just a few inches into the West, and immediately be struck with a jarring pull in the abdomen, his lungs and stomach and intestines cramping and struggling for space within him. He would often tumble to the ground and moan and whine, and wish that no patrol guard thinks of the noises as anything more than a dog.   
  
He’d do it again. And again and again and again with the same strange hope that for just one day, one of two things would happen. Either the pain would stop, or it’d be enough to shut him down altogether. He was quite used to being replaced as a state, so he thought it could happen again. As he now had theorised himself, you only do get one wish fulfilled, and it’s not always at the time you want it.   
  
“What do you wish to talk about?” The tone was stern, as if this was a repetition. Surely, it could’ve been. It wasn’t as though Gilbert was inclined to hang onto the Russian’s every word. In fact, keeping him waiting, wasting just a moment of his time was a delight. He cleared his throat, straightened himself up, and condensed his point.   
“Why is there a wall?” Not being a wordsmith, Gilbert could come up with no query more diplomatic or friendly. A smile couldn’t be contained when Ivan showed clear bristle. His left foot rubbed the ground incessantly, creating a grating that was surprisingly satisfying. Just in a second, he had been intimidated. He didn’t have the answer.   
  
Too much to hope for. “We received commands to build an official border. Something a little stronger than barbed wire.”   
  
It was as if he knew. Those blue eyes were following him wherever he went, in Berlin or otherwise. Even so, the answer was painfully unhelpful. Commands, yes. All of them received commands. Most of them, however, knew where the commands were coming from. More often than not, they had a say in the plans. It only meant that Ivan was a conspirator to the plan.   
  
“Come on. Be a little faker. Say that you didn’t want the wall to come up.”   
  
Gilbert’s hand fluttered to his mouth, coating his lips in the dirt of the room’s walls. It was nothing he was not used to, speaking out whatever was on his mind. But circumstances change, and he had to, accordingly. Disgusted in more ways than one, he, for a split second, considered darting out the door and never panicking about this moment until the next meeting rolled around.   
  
“Drama has never been a talent of mine,” admitted Ivan in a tone that deserved a smile alongside. It did not receive it.   
  
“I didn’t- what I meant was- tell me more.” A cop-out, he supposed. It was a compromise between the ideal Gilbert and the real one. The victor and the coward. He wasn’t sure which one was which. “Please tell me anything else.”   
  
The host shrugged, dusting off the thighs of his coat. It was stunning auburn leather and fur, and not something that a Soviet officer would wear. Somewhat old-fashioned as well, like a family heirloom. The classic ushanka and the boots were a little closer to the present. As of course, were the meaningless golden squares and stars strapped to his chest. It had taken a moment for him to reply sensibly to the posed request.   
  
“We need to fix our borders. We decided to do it with a wall.”   
  
The cold shook Gilbert’s voice considerably, but with a wet throat, he managed to yell out what was needed. “What was the need to do it with a wall, communist? Just admit it. You like seeing me suffer!”   
  
Perhaps it had been a week, perhaps a century. He didn’t trust himself to know. Ludwig had seen him off at the courtrooms, with nothing more than a pat on the shoulder. That too, done with the guards close enough to ruin any sliver of care. It wasn’t a real display of any kind of affection, although he supposed he’d been foolish to expect it.   
  
“We got some orders and I executed them. There’s really nothing more to it,” he said, with some degree of nonchalance. Of course, it probably didn’t matter more than a morning tea to him. Even the word communist would’ve become a designation by now.    
  
“There was-” He huffed in between phrases to keep his eyes dry. “No need for the wall. You know I can’t leave even if I tried.” Surely Ivan was as old, if not older than him, and had better experiences with taking over land that wasn’t his. He would’ve felt the pull too, albeit much less, with an army behind him to support.   
  
“If you won’t, your people will. We can’t have that.”   
  
“How desperate to leave do you think they are? They tried, but they’ve stopped. They’re too scared now.”    
  
One heard of shoving and pushing, occasionally arrests. Perhaps once or twice so far, you heard about shootings. Usually, just spiteful gossip, hoping to initiate a little bit of anti-Soviet sentiment. It didn’t work for more than a few months at a time.   
  
"I feel that you underestimate yourself," said the host. For a moment, with the saccharine tone, Gilbert could've been fooled into thinking that it was in any shape or form, a compliment. A motivational speech. It was immediately followed, of course, with a dream killing sort of expression. "You will never just listen."   
  
From being motivated, he felt that he was suddenly in the position of a child. What scared him further was that he could feel his head angling towards the ground, lowering in obedience. Almost as if a cold hand was pressing him down from the nape of his neck. His eyes widened. In some twisted way, this feeling was magic. Dark magic that worked no matter how much you knew about it.   
  
Gilbert's head raised again. "This is just you trying to hide."   
  
A smile. "What have I to hide from?"   
  
"The world knowing about your cracks. Europe. America." The latter word seemed to be a little bit of a trigger at this point because of course, there was a state policy that its enemies did not exist, and the populace would never find anything out. Gilbert was not, thankfully, part of this sheeplike horde of human trash.   
  
For a moment, he hallucinated. Hallucinated that Ivan whimpered, stepped back a little, took a noticeable gulp. All of those were in the end, just imaginations. There was not even a twitch of the lips.   
  
"I expect that you shall be the great whistleblower that shall spread these secrets? You must have had some experience after the 40's." Whatever attempts he had made at throwing a verbal punch, had been returned gracefully. More effective than anything he could've ever done. Part of Gilbert was inclined to explode, start a scream, get into a fight. Another part could reason something out.   
  
The former had always been just a little more powerful.   
  
A lunge, and a slapping of leather on wood, and the balance of power was changed. Drunk in power, Gilbert had his hands in choice places; one on the neck, and the other pressing down on the host's chest. Carefully observing the wheezing and groaning and scrunched eyes, the victor exercised some liberties and cackled like a madman. "There you have it, you son of a bitch!"   
  
To think that he hadn't truly noticed before. The town where he was being held prisoner was, in fact, that of an industry. One could naturally argue that any town in the blasted state was full of smoke producing, over-glorified fireplaces, but there were some towns that lived and breathed on lands of gas and oil. This was one of them. As Gilbert began to rise from his contorted position, all that occupied his ears was the gentle songs of the hammers and the clanking of gears.   
  
For the first time in a while, the sound was wonderful. Through a window slowly clearing, the chimneys and their supports would stand like the trees of the Black Forest. It was beautiful, because, in that moment, he could feel like their master.   
  
A flurry of spit and hot air was forced out of him with a solid sucker punch. The back of his head was then greeted by the edge of a shelf, immediately drawing a cold trickle of blood. Splinters in the wood below could so easily stick themselves onto his coat, and dig into his palms. His feet could barely find footing before he was forced even further against the shelves. Ivan was on his feet, looking to be a hundred times taller than he really was. No hat, a crumpled collar, and coat falling off his elbows. This was no soldier or officer or bureaucrat of the Soviet Union.   
  
"Look," rasped Gilbert. "I'll just go my way." His leather bag had fallen open, revealing of corners the first few pages of a letter in progress. Too foolish to leave it at home, and too foolish to carry it with him wherever he went. His shaking hands clasped and unclasped the stubborn button, again and again, his boots finally lifting himself up.   
  
“Oh, no need to go-” lilted the host. "It's always rather upsetting when guests leave so soon. Say what you need to."   
  
Admittedly, he had the flowery tone so well done that for a moment, he resembled the older sister rather than the younger one. The family resemblance was almost never clear, but when it was, it was rather jarring. Made you wonder how could have missed it at all. All three of them had that gaze. "I  _ do _ hope you aren't leaving."   
  
"I am," replied Gilbert immediately. "I have no business with you."   
  
Before he could scoop up whatever part of him had escaped, Ivan had him at nothing less than a few inches. His breath was quite hot on the nose, but thankfully smelt of nothing. The German's feet could not shift ahead even a fraction forward before they collided with Soviet boots. This sort of proximity was surprisingly familiar, but he'd always been on the other side of it.   
  
"As long as you live under my roof, you will have business with me. Please tell me whenever you do. It's fun to listen."   
  
The line had been delivered before, possibly, by a stronger voice, and in better words. It was just not that frightening at the time. Ivan's hand pressed against his shoulder, even making a small snap, and a little bomb of strain at the bottom of his neck.   
  
"And bring your papers next time."   
  
In a grace period of about 20 seconds, Gilbert dashed out of the room, right down the stairs, his coordination betraying him along the way. A couple of bumps into the front door, before realising that there were handles and locks involved. Outside, the ground was covered with snow a shade closer to grey than white.   
  
No one here truly bothered to clear the white blanket out from anywhere that was not in the radius of their homes or offices. So what every housewife, student and country had to deal with was that of wading as opposed to walking. At least he hadn’t worn his good trousers. He wouldn’t waste those on a damn meeting. As he walked, he supposed that the only option open to him was to revise what his day’s schedule would look like.   
  
Even if there were a million things that didn’t make sense, the railways were always quite sensible. The tickets were with him, as always, and the paths that scurried through the time always led to or from the way to leave. The misery that would be caused here must have been known to the planners from the start.   
  
The railway station was a rather modest one, nothing like the madness of Moscow, or even Berlin, for that matter. All that stood on the platform was a somewhat cleaned up middle aged man, looking surprisingly personable even with the highest cheekbones of any man he’d ever seen. His cheeks were pink like everyone else’s in the weather, and by the looks of it, it didn’t seem like he had anywhere to sit.   
  
The fate that some people are intended for. Just to move in and out, in and out, along the rail tracks, knowing that they can never truly leave. It was never smart to start thinking of the humans, much less sympathising with them, so he moved over to the man, and handed over his tickets.   
  
At least the man didn’t make a scene about his job. He gave the papers a half glance and decided that going back to his pacing was the best option for now. No one else was found the station save for a short woman quite far away. From what he could make out from a considerable and questionable distance was that she was holding a pole. Or something like a very thin log.   
  
She seemed to look for the train, leaning dangerously over the platform. Thin feet stepped excitedly at the prospect of seeing the flicker of a light in the tunnel. The train would take its dear time, and he wished that he could convey that to the poor woman. She seemed very restless. For the sake of any kind of human warmth, he paced across the grey stone and much closer to her. She turned to his direction, noticed him, and scurried backwards in fear.   
  
Feliks held in his hands three bags of groceries almost falling off his arm. His eyebrows crossed in apprehension. “What are you lookin’ at?”   
  
The voice was different. It cracked and said the words too fast. In the small space between them was the strong smell of scotch. Quite impressive, although Gilbert supposed that everyone had their own tricks to get some booze. His personally were handling the register at the brewery, where there was ample time for a quick sip in the stock room. He blinked a few times to get the fantasies out of his head, for the moment, and moved on to the more unfortunate matter.   
  
“Thought you’d have left.” Feliks somehow turned his voice into a murmur; a child that was confessing to a theft but attempting to do it discreetly.   
  
“The trains aren’t that nice,” he said in Polish. There was little reason to keep up the Russian facade that was neither of theirs, but Gilbert winced. With effort, he could manage a two-minute conversation. Unfortunately, the only phrase of sorts that got out of Feliks was a ‘hm’ of acknowledgement. Then it was just a dip of the head and a look in the other direction.   
  
Something was needed. Anything to fill the ticking of the single clock that hung over the platform, displaying a time just a few minutes off. A couple of thick cobwebs above it too. There had to be something. Anything that they could talk about. Food. Or the lack thereof. Where they lived. Miles apart. Where Feliks was headed. Innocent enough.   
  
“Warsaw or-?” He remembered quite a few more cities but didn’t want to even try ruining them with his accented Polish. For a moment, it seemed like Feliks’ face moved. That ever expressive face had tried so hard to set itself in stone for at least a few minutes. His lips were curling ever so slowly, and God, did he look like he hated it. "Yes. Warsaw." Now, they really sounded like they said two different words. He had reason to laugh.   
  
There were, of course, almost no prior deliberations on the train route before it was selected for Gilbert. If there was a God who was alive, he hadn't purposefully made sure that Gilbert would share a train with the person he'd tried to murder at least once a century. But however it happened, there was some mischievous son of a gun pulling the strings.   
  
"The train I'm going on, it goes through Warsaw." Almost phrased like a warning. He stepped a little away, in the case that there was going to be some kind of bitter spat. There was no telling in these days.   
  
Feliks looked over at him as though he stood before a chalkboard with equations all over it. Then, with a rough bristle, vaguely resembling a nod, and went back to caressing his bags. They held had cans in them, although, if one was to be a little optimistic, there was even an orange somewhere in there. Under the mountain of some fish product.   
  
"Where do you get that?" he muttered, reverting to German.   
  
"There's a lake around here. So all the fish is around here too. When you crack one warehouse, there's a lot you can find.” Feliks returned his dialect perfectly.    
  
The way he talked, as if Gilbert was a child, made the addressed feel particularly pricked. "I didn't know you were a thief."   
  
"It's borrowing. I'll get it to people who need it."   
  
The German forced a smile. Would you look at that? Holier-than-thou-isms. The Robin Hood, the saviour of the weak and the disheartened. A million other things that found their way into politicians’ speeches. Feliks was not the type to lie about charity, but he supposed that there was no point to lying about any of it either way.   
  
“That’s nice. You share.”   
  
“Don’t tell me you don’t,” retorted Feliks. “The Union wouldn’t be nice enough to leave you in an apartment all by yourself.”   
  
Gilbert thought of home. It was an unassuming room in an unassuming neighbourhood, out in the hinterland of Berlin. He lived in a communal sort of situation, where a mother, especially prone to sobbing at unpredictable times of the day, resided with her sons.   
  
The boys themselves were quite alright; they found their friends on the streets, only some teens that found Gilbert too old for their cigarettes and underground parties. He was often a conspirator to their excuses before dinner. Thankfully, their mother wasn’t too suspicious. Perhaps she preferred ignorance. Her husband had been in the SS.   
  
“It’s not too bad,” he commented. His voice did certainly imply that the situation was more unfortunate than it really was, but there was no time to confirm these subtle cues. The train was nigh, and from what he could make out, not exactly packed to the brim.   
  
Only a few windows, perhaps 2 out of every 5, showed heads through them. The trains usually snaked between two major cities, and attempted to cover everything on the way. As one could immediately deduce, there was a definite lack of major cities.   
  
“This is mine,” said Feliks, and Gilbert’s back hunched over.   
  
Hope was not lost. If he ran fast enough, there was a chance that he'd find a seat that was isolated. His boots grappled with the iron of the train floor as he hoisted himself up. This was not an acrobatic show of talent, but if it had been, then his performance would've been impressive. There was the smell of tobacco the very moment he entered. The populace of the train looked mostly to be the sort that dealt only in cigs.   
  
The grey clothes, tired eyes, hands repeating the motions that they were so used to. Some of them had soot deep in their fingernails from hours of hard labour. If they had been especially busy, there were some cuts on their forearms.   
  
"You might want to hurry it up," said Feliks behind him.   
  
As lonely as they looked, none of the workers seemed to enjoy each others' company. Not enough speak to each other, let alone sit together.   
  
In a way, it was a relief, nothing like the complainant, aggressive trains of Saxony. He fluttered sideways through the main lane, and brought himself into a booth, getting to the window seat immediately. As de jure men of the government, they'd received a good carriage, but that was as far as the luxury was extended to them.   
  
Feliks entered the same cabin as he did, making it a priority to lay down his stolen cans tidily in a corner, and take off his boots, and place his feet on the opposite berth, next to where Gilbert sat. The man knew how to make the most of things. After a brief moment of consideration, the German moved his feet the same way, letting his thighs and shins soak in the stretch.   
  
"It's going to be a long while. Do you plan to drop off anywhere? Spend a night?"   
  
Gilbert shook his head. "Only places to drop off are at Warsaw or Minsk."   
  
Feliks laughed. "Caught between a rock and a hard place."   
  
According to the plans that were vaguely discussed whenever there was a summons, the train from Russia would stop at Warsaw, after about a day of travel, and then, a second coach would head on to Berlin. It was the longest journey to undertake out of all the people that attended meetings. Another reason to wonder why he still bothered with it.   
  
It was a long while before they'd be given any food, and the view outside disappointed immensely. When it struck Gil that the only possibility for him was to either sleep or chat, he realised the true misery he was in. In the most unfortunate of times, he wasn't even that tired. Now naturally, he tried. He slouched as crooked as his spine would allow, closed his eyes and pretended as though a wave of fatigue had come upon him. No, of course, it hadn't. In fact, today was not a tiring day, regardless of all that had happened.   
  
“Man,” he heard Feliks mumble. There was the crumpling of paper, and a shove of something heavy. Perhaps he’d seen through the sleeping, something that truly insulted Gil’s pride in his acting. The attention of his companion was, however, only on his beloved foodstuffs.   
  
There was a time when Gilbert just had to give up the act. He whipped awake, startling Feliks.   
  
“Christ. I always knew you to be troublesome, but-”   
  
Gilbert flinched. It had been several years since they had spoken to each other face to face. Of course, their minds and their wills had found a way to make themselves known, usually through gunfire. But Gilbert wasn't Germany. No, he could never truly be. Perhaps that's why there was such an uncomfortable itch in calling half of Germany home.   
  
Either way, an old acquaintance had to be humoured. "Old habits never die."   
  
Yes, it was a fact that Feliks knew all too well. So well, that he lost the smile, straightened himself and sighed. “This shit is familiar.”   
  
A nod, because saying anything would be insolent.   
  
“At least in those days the kings wore great stuff and lived in great palaces. We don’t even get that these days.”   
  
Gilbert had the feeling that this was going to turn into a blithering mess of emotion, but he stayed put till the situation truly worsened. He was naturally, in no mood to be a therapist to a high strung Pole. In the meantime, the mentioned was sorting through his bag. It seemed quite hollow on the inside, carrying possibly just the papers and nothing else. Odd. He always assumed that Feliks was the type to carry the unnecessary. It was as though he was wrong about a lot of things lately.   
  
After a couple of moments of Gil’s ugly staring, Feliks turned. He didn’t look particularly irritated, or exasperated. Certainly sounded like it when he uttered a simple ‘what’. The German had to adopt a defensive position quite quickly.   
  
“Nothing to do,” he whined and received a mother’s sympathetic smile.   
  
“Yes, I gathered that. Why don’t you just go to sleep?”   
  
“I would if I could,” he hissed back. He folded into himself and pretended to fall asleep again, but was poked in the leg with the classic pair of fingers. Recovering from the jolt, he could feel the air in the cabin working against him. Hot cheeks and hotter air around them.  He retracted his legs and curled up.   
  
“I know you’re not in the mood to talk, but I am. So fuck you, talk.” At least Feliks was plain and simple about it. With half of those annoying social cues missing, it felt so much more bearable. He thought for a moment. What benefits would he get out of this conversation?   
  
Well, nothing, but the seconds and minutes would pass. So he decided to stretch out his eyelids for a bit and keep himself alive enough to chat.   
  
“What time did you leave Berlin to get here?” A small talk statement to start off the mood. But Gil was not in a mood to complain.   
  
“Oh, yesterday evening.” The station had been quite a contrast to the one in Russia. There were people planning to camp overnight, huddled together in musty blankets. A line for tickets that stretched out till the roads. And of course, bitter German muttering, using a variety of idioms to get their dissent out.   
  
In that way, he supposed he liked the previous station better.   
  
“You’re killing me here,” commented Feliks. “Talk to me. Were your tickets preplanned?”   
  
“God, I’d be dead if they weren’t. Lines were long.” Not quite verbose yet, but perhaps holding some more feeling. “It’s nice of them, right?”   
  
“Oh, wonderful. I felt so important when I could walk past that big line and smirk.” That was nice to think about, that the lines were the same no matter where you went. The true uniting factor in the country. Gilbert found that he was smiling, slowly but surely.    
  
“Back to the humdrum soon, though,” his partner observed.    
  
The smile disappeared. “What d’you do?”   
  
Feliks shrugged. “I help out with the neighbours' housework sometimes. Not for money.”   
  
The last bit was somewhat redundant. There was no need for money. They had all the money that there was to be had. But the whole deal with helping people was irritating at best. Why couldn’t he stop being a good person for just a moment and do what the humans did? Keep to themselves and hope for death.    
  
“What about you?”   
  
“I stay at home. Take rounds around the city. Ask me anything about Berlin, I’ll tell ya.”   
  
A sad existence, but it helped to know where the gangs lived, where the best underground shows went on, and where the guards patrolled along the fence. Well, not there was no point to that, was there.    
  
“Heard about the wall. Damn.” God, there was always something that had to ruin the mood.    
  
Gilbert leant against the window, making sure to keep all his weight against the glass. If anything could take his force, it would be a train. Feliks’ head followed his action, tilting as well. He sported pursed lips and raised brows. “Oh. Bit rough, huh?”   
  
Then he scoffed. “Come on, it's not the end of the world.”   
  
“Shut the fuck up.”   
  
“Touchy, aren’t we?” The words were said with bite. “Don’t be a pussy. This is not the worst that can happen to you.”   
  
He sounded like Fritz. That was the first and only thought that he could come up with.    
  
Then Gilbert remembered he was talking to a Pole, and he swallowed. “Never mind.”   
  
“Now, if you want to channel your boohoos into something a little more- fun, I can entertain it.” The face that was stoic so far broke into a cheeky grin. “Feel free to complain about him.”   
  
“Him-?”   
  
“God, you are stupid..”   
  
Out of an instinct that he didn’t know he had, he looked around for officials. Or recorders. Or spies. Or, hell, even a poster of the leader, because the guy really looked shady.    
  
“I tried to talk to him, you know. Ask him about the wall.”   
  
Feliks whistled. “Boy. How did that go?”   
  
“What the fuck is his deal? He’s a madman.”   
  
“Doesn’t even make it look good.” A smirk.    
  
Gilbert huffed. “You’ve known him for longer. What do you know about him?”   
  
His mouth widened. A nervous laugh resounded through the surprisingly bleak cabin. The single chime turned into a couple until the German began to get concerned.    
  
“Oh, God,” said Feliks between laughs. “If I knew how he worked, do you think I’d be here?”   
  
Alright, fair point, but couldn’t a man hold a little bit of hope?   
  
“I can tell you all that I can recall about him as a kid. I am older, you know.”   
  
“That’s news.”   
  
“Just because I don’t look it doesn’t mean I’m not as old as you. Maybe older.”   
  
“Don’t change the subject.” Remembering his own age saddened him like it would a waning actress.    
  
“Whatever. I knew him as a kid, but Katya and ‘Tasha knew him better.”   
  
“I don’t have even a quarter of a mind to talk to them. So start your storytelling.”   
  
Looks like the story was so grandiose that it called for a few minutes of preparation. Feliks settled a little deeper into his chair and fluffed his coat like a grandmother. Just enough for assuming the role. He crossed his legs and opened his mouth, quite a while before he started talking.    
  
“He was a kid in the 1500s, that ran into the castle and may or may not have kicked over three guards.”   
  
As far as he was concerned, he was far older than Ivan if the 1500s were the initial years. It was a fact that gave him happiness, but then, he realised that he was quite possibly letting his age show.    
“Shame I didn’t have such an entrance.”   
  
“We have eight hours ahead of us, and you’re going to tell me your own story too.”   
  
Gilbert bristled. “Hey, let’s cross a bridge before building another.”    
  
“Anyway, this obviously got the attention of Ivan the Terrible, and there was a political thing-“   
  
“Cut to the part where he becomes a sociopath.”   
  
Feliks crossed his legs the other way very quickly, making sure to get the soles of his feet on Gil’s pants for a split second. “You don’t need to be impatient, you know. I had a groove going.”   
  
Storytellers had some amount of pride in their story, but when the protagonist was known to be an unsympathetic seeming bastard, it was a little easier to make it a badly told tale. After all, elegant words and arching scenes were only for good people.    
  
“The groove doesn’t matter. I just want to know when he lost it.”   
  
A click. “You’re making a pretty big assumption here. You think that he’s crazy.”   
  
Paired with a scoff. “And you plan to defend him.”   
  
“I think he’s scared. Soft in the head.”   
  
Years of living through real politics had not prepared him for such a bastardised excuse for such despicable behaviour. There were evenings in chambers where kings and generals liked nothing more than to complain to their icons, and Gilbert often humoured whoever that needed it. But never before had he seen someone who was going to try and be sympathetic.    
  
“Must be damn soft to destroy half of Europe.”   
  
“Oh, yes, because only  _ he _ did that,” snapped Feliks.    
  
Perhaps stomachs just knew what was the perfect time to growl and lurch and sink. It could sense everything happening within Gilbert, and screamed even when there was no need for food.    
  
“Anyway,” he restarted, without a moment of silence. “What I mean is that the man isn’t evil because he wants to be evil.”   
  
“Oh, his precious master is telling him to, yes, of course.”   
  
“Would you let me finish!” The narrator hissed. “You don’t know how the story works, so why bother adding to it!”   
  
“Don’t fucking silence me.”   
  
“Oh, the Crown Prince is being insulted?”   
  
As if the world was partaking in their conversation, the argument was quickly interrupted by the signal of the train. A station, a little better off than the one Gilbert had gotten on from. The snow was less here, but the atmosphere no less dismal. Around the station lay forests that were long reduced to stumps.    
  
Whatever trees left were most certainly dead.   
  
From what Gilbert could see, no one was getting off at the station, and only a couple of middle-aged men, those that looked like war veterans, got on. The station had more stray dogs than human beings when he craned over to get a better glimpse. But they were cute ones.   
  
“I’m not willing to tell you if you aren’t going to listen.”   
  
There were, admittedly, better times to argue than when there was a tale in the making. The German sighed and extended a hand, a gesture for Feliks to keep on blabbering. Just with the soft hope that perhaps he’d make the information short and snappy and very anti-establishment.    
  
“Either way, my theory is that something-“ He paused for a moment when he heard the sounds of thick suitcases being dragged along the thin train corridors. “Something made him like this.”   
  
“How the fuck do you make a tyrant?”   
  
“How was your brother made?”   
  
The train began to move with a jolt, and had gotten itself into quite a comfortable pace before there was sound in the cabin again. The sound itself was weak anyway.    
  
“Bad times. Those weren’t his fault.”   
  
Feliks snapped his fingers.   
  
“Ivan had some pretty rough rulers in the past. Maybe they really sucked the shit out of him.”   
  
“We’ve all had rough rulers. Don’t tell me that.”   
  
“God!” His hand flew to his dear cans of tuna, and Gil curved onto himself for the impact, shielding his face.    
  
“Look, stop trying,” he hissed. “Stop trying to defend him.”   
  
The Pole exhaled. He retracted his hand, smoothened the hay like strands that had become dislodged from under his wool cap, and crossed his arms. For measure, he whipped his legs onto the other’s lap and made sure to keep it very, very close to where his legs met.    
  
“Why didn’t you get your papers this morning?”   
  
It took several moments for the words to actually make sense. What papers, what morning, what Feliks meant. Gil hoped that this wasn’t some strange side effect of being so old.    
  
“Oh. I left them at home.”   
  
And Feliks smiled. He fucking smiled.   
  
“Shouldn’t have asked. Resistance member that you were.”   
  
The veins of Gilbert’s hands were popping. Information that was in the forties would’ve stayed there. He had burnt all the records and names to the ground when the Allies swept the cities. There was no chance of Feliks getting his hands into that intel unless he had a surprisingly useful intelligence force.    
  
Green eyes flitted from his hands to his face. “Oh, wow, I was right. I guess you’re the Cain to Ludwig’s Abel.”   
  
Never had he been a big fan of metaphors, let alone the biblical. All he got out, to avoid pissing off the mighty Catholic, was a small sigh. “Yes. Okay. I was the Cain.”   
  
“Either way, you’ve got balls. Did Vanya fuck you up afterwards?”   
  
Gilbert’s lips felt the need to twitch, and he couldn’t stop a smirk. “He wishes that he could try.”   
  
“Yes, I did hear the ‘I’ll just go, please leave me alone!’ The words of a true German hero.”   
  
What was the time period? Where was the little seam in the people that left and the emptiness that he had found outside the offices? There was no time for Feliks to stay on the staircase and reach the station before him. With the tuna nonetheless.    
  
“How did you hear it?”   
  
“I guessed. Sad.”   
  
There was nothing that could be done to counter the feeling of dread that for Gilbert to cover the majority of his face with his palm, and focus intensely on the scenery outside. Forget that there was ever anything said.   
  
“Look, I know you hate this,” Feliks had to revert back to his Polish, perhaps out of an instinct. “I’m sorry for you. But there’s no point fighting the system.”   
  
“That’s all I know how to do,” came the murmur from in between fingertips.    
  
“I’m used to this. It always ends. Chill out about it.”   
  
“Unlike you, I tend to be a little less sheep.”   
  
A scoff. “Well. You’re going to find yourself in a load of trouble if you keep this shit up. Face it. Laying low works. Sometimes."   
  
"It's worked just fine for you, hasn't it?"   
  
Feliks' hand coiled around the paper bags that he lauded around, creating the most unpleasant of crinkles. There were different ways of releasing tensions, he supposed. "This isn't about what I did, what you did, this is about us now. I know Ivan. He'll leave you alone if only you keep it shut."   
  
He knew. Of course, he knew. Gilbert knew that there was some pattern to how Ivan worked. "That's all I want to know. I want to know how you know."   
  
"The initial years are always the worst. He'll near kill you to get you on his side. But once you're there-"   
  
"It's so hellish." Gilbert let himself whine. "I hate it. There's nothing to have."   
  
"He's convinced himself that we want nothing. So we get nothing."   
  
"Communist at heart.”   
  
“Communist at heart, yes. But also perhaps, just a soldier.”   
  
“The thing is,” began Gilbert, his voice already seeming low. “We all are soldiers. We don’t do this.”   
  
“He’s a better soldier than us, then, I suppose. He knows how to blank himself and just be a weapon.”   
  
“Takes a lot to round up people and toss them into a wasteland. Takes a lot to fucking tear a country apart.”   
  
The train was drawing to a stop again, the station slightly bigger than the one before. However, the comparison seemed a little unfair. This one had a great deal of surrounding, a great deal of peripheral vision. There was a smaller town, another one of industry. If one looked very closely, there were grey surfaces that vaguely resembled water.    
  
“I know it takes a lot. He’s got a lot.”   
  
“What about the prison camps? What about the experiments that you know he has going on somewhere? That’s not the work of a soldier!”   
  
All the while that Feliks had been, dare he say, excusing him. The tone of a priest suddenly assumed that of a child being patronised in a class. For better or worse, Gilbert felt as though he was some professor that had pointed out a serious flaw in his work. He retracted his legs from the other’s lap and crossed them.    
  
In Gil’s lap, his black dress pants had been desecrated by a thin impression of the water on the soles of the pitiable things that could be called shoes. He scratched his own feet against the floor, and noticed a very weak, but nonetheless existent smudge.    
  
“Got nothing to say?” He probed in German.   
  
Feliks looked down at his lap, fixated on fingers that were peeling dry skin off their tips. The air between them had suddenly become that of enemies, but that was nothing that was particularly unusual.   
  
“The propaganda’s working, I guess.” The voice was far too submissive to belong to whom it did. There were only a few short times that Gilbert had seen him upset, and he’d said nothing in those times. Maybe because his voice tended to sound like that.   
  
“Look,” he gulped out. “All we need to do is to stick this out. Maybe after a few years, the nuclear war will happen and we’ll all blow up and die.”   
  
The blonde nodded slowly. Only in these times did words like these becoming comforting. It was quiet and unremarkable for all of a few seconds until Feliks let out a loud, ungraceful howl. He brought his legs up onto the seat in whatever little space he could manage and buried his head between his knees.   
  
He was so incredibly, ridiculously thin. He could quite comfortably bring his feet wholly onto the seat, even if it meant keeping his entire body straight as a log. Gilbert was tempted to try it, but only when he didn’t have an audience.   
  
“I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die like this,” Feliks whined, with little regard for any passerby that might hear. The true gravity sunk in when he realised that he was the one looking around for people like some mother with a child gone mad.   
  
There were no tears, at least. Occasionally, the younger of the brothers that he lived with would injure himself, and the entire house would fill with groaning and moaning and reprimanding and occasionally the thick sound of a smack to the shoulder.   
  
In those times he always found himself at the very corner of the bed, his foot occasionally tapping the kid’s thigh, asking him to stay quiet before he got another smack.  The kid wouldn't listen, at least not until even the mother had to leave him to attend to dinner. The entire exercise was a fruitless exercise, as it wasn't as though the kids looked upon him as their friend.   
  
What was to be done now?   
  
"Stop pretending like you were born yesterday. You've had worse than this."   
  
Feliks' hands were shaking, so much so that a firm grip on the cloth of his pants didn't help for a moment in steadying them. This was something he had seen before, not in Poland, but in Lutz. Just maybe a decade into the boy's immortality, and the panic got to him right before a meeting with his own King. Admittedly, comforting him then was easier than now.   
  
"I'm sorry," he got out. "I'm sorry for everything."   
  
The desperate, volatile hands relaxed for a moment. Even after, their movements were considerably constricted. He chuckled, a hiccupy sort of sound that faded away very quickly. "Now ask Vanya to say the same, please."   
  
Part of him was convinced that Feliks had been joking, trying to drag the sympathy out of him like a tapeworm. His face had recovered from the shock immediately, left with only a few faint creases. His feet toppled onto the ground with a clatter, nearly trampling over Gilbert's own.   
  
It had been a nightmarish fifteen minutes past, wherein Feliks had become so rapidly a loyalist and a revolutionary. Perhaps the nationalist sentiments were unstable everywhere. "You see," the Pole began in that sheepish tone, now familiar. "I can't decide if I should just scream out and burn everything, or wait. Sometimes one works, sometimes the other."   
  
If there was indeed, some magic to predicting the future, Gilbert would've sold his soul, his land and his people to the Devil for it. These kinds of sentiments tended to worry good Catholics, so he kept them to himself.   
  
"That'll always be the problem. We'll never know what works or what doesn't. What's going to exist or what doesn't. If you haven't found a kid or something ready to replace you, chances are that you're going to be fine." He said the words with a smile, one that, to his surprise, wasn't forced.   
  
Maybe it was an instinct. Maybe all that good work for his neighbours had gotten to his head. Feliks leant forward without a moment of lapse and patted his hand. "Don't say that. You're not leaving anytime soon."   
  
Gil blinked. He looked at his hand with eyebrows furrowed. Then came the understanding. He allowed himself a snort and a closing of his eyes. Feeling particularly extravagant, he let himself look at Feliks.   
  
"Didn't think of that, but-" A heavy sigh. "East Germany's not going to run itself.”   
  
"Most importantly," said Feliks with a finger raised. "A revolution isn't going to start itself. Give that guy my greetings when you can."   
  
"Only if you go for the balls when I go for the head."   
  
Anyone that was within a metre radius would've heard these words, spilling out as though they were playground chatter. They would be concerned, perhaps alert the conductor to a possible murder plot. Ah, what was he thinking? Mentions of murder were dime a dozen, a staple of all conversations, young, old, male, female.    
  
For the next one hour, they discussed so. They talked about all the places they could go, whether or not guards waited for them at every turn or not. The few fellow satellites that were likely to be willing conspirators were discussed. Anyone west of Poland was difficult at best. Estonia and Liet could perhaps be convinced, said Feliks, while Gil preferred to take no stance.   
  
Raivis, the Pole decided, was too risky. He could just blabber the plot onto Vanechka. That was another strange world that Gil was introduced to by his Slavic-speaking friend. The various ways that you could desecrate a name were all known to Feliks, even though Polish didn't use them the same way. Perhaps he had taken those several years of forced Russian productively.   
  
"If you need a code with me, call him Jan or Janek too. It's the same as the German Hans or Johann, you know."   
  
"Why does it sound so ugly then?" A giggle.   
  
All this while, there was some dinner. Nothing to write home about, just some sandy bread with a mysterious creamy filling that tasted like air. The food was never much of their concern anyway. At least not in such times.   
  
Eventually, they found that the landscape had become so much more constricted, and there was even the need for the lanterns. Gilbert was pained for a smoke and expressed so. Almost immediately, he had a taste of Polish cigarettes, a splendid end to a splendid day. They had a bite, even if they weren't the same.   
  
"I'm going to take a nap." Feliks was shivering again, but not really because of a bout of paranoia. It was more likely because even the most generous of Soviet steel was not going to keep out the even more persistent cold. When his eyes finally did close, Gil was wide awake. In less than an hour, maybe less, they'd be in Warsaw.   
  
To their credit, they had made it through Belarus alive.   
  
For lack of anything to do, he looked in his bag. Occasionally, one found remnants of old documents, notes or photographs in those. Well, he'd scoured all his old coats and bags dry, but there was always the hope. At the slightest touch of paper in the midst of the cloth, he started.   
  
A note. A letter. A torn corner of his documents.   
  
He pulled out a poster. An incomplete poster, of course, likely torn off his front door when those little kids went around sticking them on. What remained was 'mother', quite possibly a contraction of 'motherland'.   
  
He shoved the poster back in and whipped the lantern out. Sleep would come, and so would Berlin.   



	2. sickle.

Of land weak and parentage poor,  
Through piece and peace he will attain to the empire.  
For a long time a young female to reign,  
Never has one so bad come upon the kingdom.  
\- 28, Century III  
  
There are some things in life that you just get used to. If your street is loud, very loud, then after a while, quiet becomes unnatural. If you see children around the fields behind your house, screaming and playing and laughing. You think nothing of it.  
  
Until they leave. That’s when you know that there’s something strange. In a small while, the course of a few weeks, several small farmers that lived along her street had moved away. They had said that they’d find some work in the city. Never did they use the word better. A better job. Because they knew that at any time, they would return, somewhat humbled. Katya would not say that, of course.  
  
She would see them off in the manner that she was very familiar with. A handkerchief in the wind and moistness in her eyes. Soon enough, there’s nothing but the breeze, and life returns to its usual pace. This had been happening since March, and now, in May, it was only Yekaterina’s cottage.  
  
Almost halfway into 1977, she noticed.  
  
She had a timetable, of sorts. The last few things in her life that would never, ever change. Every morning, no matter the weather, she would brew herself a cup of tea, liberally called so, as it was more often than not lemon water. Then, she would sit on her shabby little porch and sip on it, watching the fields. They stretched out for eternity, and thus, she would be reminded of why she chose to live here instead of near the city.  
  
The hard-hearted could argue, she supposed. They could argue that this meant that she had no one to make small talk with, to discuss the weather, other people, anything else that was easy to talk about. A part of her at the time was so, so afraid of being alone. Natalya dropped in sometimes.  
  
But on the 8th of June, in 1977, she had company. When the doorbell rang, she had been washing some fruits, whatever she could get from the orchard, now no man's land. With a click of the tongue and a pull of her apron, she shook her hands loose and scurried over to her door. Even if there are indeed a disturbance of any kind, it always seemed to come at the most inconvenient of times.  
  
Lifting the elaborate latch and all its attached buckles, she yanked the stiff wooden door open. The very first thing that her eyes happened to fall on (and this was excusable, for it was very bright and at her eye level) was the star badge with delicately engraved writing on it. A slower scan of the body revealed a form that was robust, much, much larger than her.  
  
A second of preparation, and she looked at the man's face. A crooked jaw, a Roman nose, and eyes so sunken and heavy-lidded that they looked as though they stuck to their sockets.  
  
"Vanka!" Her still wet hands grabbed onto the sides of his face, nearly for dear life.  
  
Immediately, she pulled back. In fact, she was thrown back. Not by her brother's force, but more so, because of his skin being like metal railings during a snowfall. Frozen stiff. He looked down at her, let himself in, and threw his heavy bag onto the table. It almost seemed like it'd break. Thankfully, it was sturdier than she believed it to be. He stood near it wordlessly for several tense seconds, before pulling up a chair and taking it.  
  
"Sit down," he said, in his finest 'regular' drawl.  
  
Maybe it's a game of make-believe, she thought. He must be pretending that he's just an officer, and she's just a resident, and there's nothing more between them. He used to be quite fond of these games when he was a child, living life exactly how their neighbours did. She wondered if perhaps he did the same in his spare time.  
  
"I'm here to inform you that in October, there's going to be a new constitution in effect."  
  
Katya's eyes widened considerably, and she sat down opposite him. "What, again?" She had a mind to say something a little more, perhaps comment on how the weather changes less than the Constitution, but she kept her jaws painfully clenched.  
  
"Yes, again. The true hallmark of a state is its ability to change with the times."  
  
A line that he had no doubt been totally spoonfed, but she nodded with an equally spoonfed smile. "Alright then."  
  
They exchanged a few more seconds of eye contact, and Katya supposed that if she was at all getting the opportunity to talk to him again, she might as well make the most of it.  
  
"How are things back in Leningrad?" she breached. "Do you meet the others often?"  
  
An incredulous look. Eyebrows pressed fiercely together. Katya shivered back into her seat, her shoes rushing to push herself back into a position of stranger-hood.  
  
"Nothing. Don't answer. It's fine. Do you want some water?"  
  
Before he even got the chance to accept, she got out of her chair and scrambled for the sink, where a pitcher of potable water always lay for the occasional visitor. Just as she began to pour our a cup, she felt the squeaking sound of leather against wood. His bag had been scraped off the table.  
  
"Are you leaving?", she asked, leaving the glass half empty.  
  
He turned to her. He had already been heading out.  
  
"I suppose."  
  
She looked him up and down. There was something to be said about his form. It filled the room with nothing but his own dominance. Her hands fidgeted, scratching at each other as she looked for the words. Two lexicons and not a single thing came to mind except "sit".  
  
Without any hesitation, he put his bag back and took his seat. This time, he let his legs relax. And the way he looked at her when he turned; she could've sworn that for a moment there, his face was rounder and pinker and bruised from a slap given by the local butcher.  
  
He was just a boy.    
  
She gave him the water, which he took a long, long sip of. He had emptied it. The train journey had been long, no doubt, but him not even being given water seemed quite strange. Usually, it would seem that he was the pampered child of the Union. There were just so many confusions attached to him like capes.  
  
“So are you- going around telling us about the changes?”  
  
Before answering her question, he pulled out a book from his bag. It was covered in a coat of brown paper. But it couldn’t have been a banned book, as the title was clearly written on its front.  
  
“Fathers and Sons,” she read. “Turgenev. You must be feeling particularly nihilistic.”  
  
These words sounded foreign and strange to her. They didn't fit on her tongue. They felt out of place. She hadn’t discussed such things for a very long time, and even when she had, she was in those pretentious literary circles of the 1860s that she never liked. Often to attend those meetings was just a formality. A state duty to encourage the blossoming of art and creativity in the area.  
  
Yes, that did go well, didn't it.  
  
He pursed his lips at her short remark and finally opened his mouth to more than a handful of words.  
  
"If they sent out ordinary officers to eleven specific people, they'd get suspicious. Hence, only I'm supposed to go around."  
  
Some part of her dropped. She couldn't deny that. Without any answer to depend upon, she'd taken it upon herself to believe that she was special. That this wasn't a formal visit. That just perhaps, he genuinely wanted to see her after such a long time. It was never so good, this world. But she smiled and nodded a little too happily for her general self.  
  
“I see. Must be backbreaking travel. Do you have to do that completely alone?”  
  
“Yes. That’s what I just said.”  
  
The sentence was said so quickly that there was a feeling of guilt somewhere in her. But Ivan’s face relaxed immediately after.  
  
“I did ask for a subordinate. Some kind of assistant, just to take notes, but they didn’t give me anyone.”  
  
“Due to a lack of people, or-”  
  
He shrugged and flipped a page. Surely he was not reading, not even planning to, but the book served as a comfortable little boundary wall between them. He didn’t speak for a little while, fixated on the large window behind her. It had everything that a window shouldn’t, ideally. Dirty panes that were not perfectly horizontal, a lack of curtains.  
  
It wasn’t even that she was too poor to get curtains. In fact, if the cloth came around (which was rare), she could get them sewn for next to nothing. The lady next door was trained in the craft of the seamstress-  
  
But she no longer lived here. Around December of last year, the family received news that her son was getting a job as a police officer in Kiev, so they bolted out of this nowhere and into a future that was apparently much better. She wanted to write to them, but never really found herself doing more than getting the paper and pen ready.  
  
“No, there’s not a lack of people. I think they really wanted me to be completely on my own for this.”  
  
She’d almost forgotten what had been asked earlier, so when he replied, she laughed and nodded mechanically. Then she recalled that it wasn’t really funny. It had been so long since she had talked to anyone remotely close to her, and she found herself double checking her words already. You weren’t supposed to be tense around family.  
  
Vanushka had already begun to return to hs book again, reading it with a newfound interest. It was aggravating to be in an answerable position, but even more to be in a dead silence. There was simply no correct way of going about a talk.  
  
"Is there any news of anyone else? Am I the first one you visited?"  
  
The book was slammed onto the table and shoved right into his bag. It seems as though he was going to leave for a moment, but he focused his attention back on her. He cleared his throat.  
  
"You are the first, yes," he admitted. "I just knew that your house was here, I know it best of all houses."  
  
Should she be touched at that? Quite possibly. Before she could even pose it as a question to herself, she found herself smiling at it. Old loves die hard.  
  
"Well, I expect nothing else! This is the oldest house that I've ever lived in. I'm amazed that the postman doesn't notice I'm not getting older."  
  
There was a longer story behind the unfortunate postman. He had begun to ask questions a couple of years ago, beginning of course with compliments about her never-changing face. She broke the Secrecy Pact for the first time in at least 200 years, which in her defence, was much less commonly than the Western European zealots.  
  
He passed away a year ago, so let's hope that the secret died with him.  
  
"I suppose they're indifferent now. For them, life is just performing some dull work and waiting for the day to end."  
  
He said those words as if they were poetry. With perfect stress on each fifth syllable and a throaty voice.  
  
"Do you give speeches often?" she asked, taking the glass away.  
  
A prompt response. "Well, sometimes I am required to address a gathering of bureaucrats, but usually not."  
  
Katya gave out an unconstrained giggle. "And here I thought that I was breaking the Secrecy Pact too often."  
  
"The Pact doesn't exist anymore," said Ivan bitterly. "I think that anyone who still follows it would be either a liar or a simpleton. It doesn't do good for nations now to become apathetic."  
  
A simpleton. Katya washed out the glass, whispering the word to herself. She rather liked how it sounded, but it didn't seem the same when being said to people like her.  
  
"I like to believe that someone's just taking care of things for me and I don't need to worry about a thing. I know it's silly to think so, but I find that it's been true for a long time.”  
  
These words were not kind ones. They certainly were not laced with happiness and calm. They were her own strange way of protest, her way of shyly talking about her feelings. It was also the only way that she could figure them out too. The government in Kiev often asked her to preside over it, talk about politics, and every time she would have to rephrase a response that clearly said that she would rather step through several miles of manure than be in any way, reminded that there was a country that she had to be responsible for.  
  
They usually asked only once every 50 years.  
  
“Nothing you should worry about,” said Vanya stiffly.  
  
Katyusha smiled. If this was an attempt at reassurance, she most certainly appreciated it.  
  
“Yes, well. If you’re so heavily involved in the workings at Moscow, then it’s probably a good thing. Keeps the body healthy.”  
  
“You say that as though you’re a doctor.”  
  
She huffed. “I spent so long taking care of you and ‘Tasha. Of course, I know how you two work.”  
  
The truth was that she made guesses. Plenty of guesses, but these were usually right. The economy, the happiness of the people and the state of government were all signs of a nation’s health. And there hadn’t been internal, or for that matter, external crises for the Union in a very long time. The last one that everyone heard about was at Cuba, but mentioning that was not going to be good for either of them.  
  
“Whenever these things seem remotely predictable, they suddenly take a turn for the worse.”  
  
She suddenly felt stupid, something that had been happening more and more frequently of late. Maybe she wasn’t the best person to think about nationhood, considering that she was by far one of the most avoidant.  
  
“Would you like something heartier to eat? I don’t think that you’ve had a heavy meal.”  
  
He shrugged, but then mulled over it and nodded. It occurred to her that she truly didn’t have much to offer that would suit such a heavy man. Some bowls of yesterday’s stew still remained, along with half a loaf of rye. In the capital, particularly as a high ranked officer, one would get so much good food and wine and anything that one needed.  
  
Somehow, Katya felt the need to impress him. But how would that be done-  
  
Well, he'd have to make do with what he got. She headed over to the refrigerator, a clunky thing that did it's work quite delightfully for its age. Just as she was about to retrieve the pot, she noticed that there was a smaller, less extravagant, but much more delicious serving of pastry that she'd near forgotten about. Well, she must've been saving it for some occasion that had most certainly arrived.  
  
"If you wait for a little, I can make you some pampushky!" He hadn't eaten the doughnuts in a while, and neither had she prepared them, so it made for quite a memorable occasion.  
  
He looked for a moment exactly like a cat, cornered into one of the ditches of a street. Like all his best weapons were suddenly ineffective. With an obvious gulp, he nodded vigorously and even began the procedure of freeing himself from all that coat and caboodle. He wore a lot of layers, likely forcibly, because even a single odd part of the uniform could lead him into a series of interrogations about spy business.  
  
Katya hoped that the 'spy fever' was the same, if not worse, in other places.  As he got up to keep his coat and hat on another table, he revealed a great deal that he would not have liked to reveal. His body was heavy, impossible for any bullet to penetrate straight. Even a grenade from a respectable distance wouldn't do much for it. There was certainly muscle.  
  
Why would it then, seem so childish? Like it belonged to more of a plump schoolboy, not a hard soldier. Her hands pressed against the dough with unnecessary force. She had to concentrate on only one thing at a time, lest she screw up both. Still, she heard him settling into the chair, his boots scraping against something.  
  
"Are those fields part of this home?" he asked. She was tempted to comment that it was a silly question and that those fields stretched on so far that one woman enjoying them would be a sin. They served now, a purely aesthetic, communal purpose. Grasses in the wind could be watched for days at a time.  
  
"Oh, goodness no. There's a fence somewhere in there." They were the land that the local municipality owned, obviously, but there was no productivity out of it anyway. The good fields, the one's where there was actual tilling and actual planting, were so far away, physically and theoretically, that she never really wondered where the rations came from.  
  
"Children used to play there," she recalled as if narrating a tale. "They grow up and they go look for better lives, usually in the better cities."  
  
After a pregnant pause, Ivan ventured, "Are you alone here, in the neighbourhood?"  
  
He used the last few words relatively liberally, and that was enough to make her laugh.  
  
"No, not exactly. About half a kilometre down, there's a cattle farm run by an Aleksandr." As some cruel joke, he was the only person that she had not yet truly interacted with besides a 'good morning' thrown out. He was a gruff man, definitely a war veteran, that made do with one eye being a red, swollen patch of freckled skin. He lived with a daughter that she was much more comfortable talking to.  
  
The daughter, Iryna, was, unfortunately, taciturn like her father, making communication a dangerous and energy-sapping ordeal. For the few rare times in her life, she would rather not talk to someone.  
  
"Can half a kilometre really be within a neighbourhood?" he murmured, keeping his pitch low.  
  
Oh, yes, the city definition of the neighbourhood would've been so much more restrictive. Perhaps just three buildings along the same street, and suddenly you were in another part of the place. It reminded her how much she pitied the life of a city dweller. And in fact, city dwellers themselves.  
  
"Yes, well. We have no streets or any of that out here, so we make do with these definitions."  
  
As she had begun to make the poppy seed filling for her meal, there were footsteps outside. Her porch, made out of solid cedar, would pick up ever little thing that ever stepped on it. Much to her disdain, this included foxes and badgers. She let out the slightest sigh and wiped her hands on the abused cloth that always lay on her counter.  
  
"I'm coming!" Ivan's gaze followed her to the door, somewhat curious.  
  
She pulled on the doorknob. Ordinarily, she would've giggled. Instead, her fists clenched.  
  
"Surprise!" managed Tolys in the cheeriest voice he could. She recalled often complaining that his voice and his face made a very mismatched couple, but it was nice to see that he was making amends. He held a large bouquet of white lilies, wrapped up in plastic. Some of them were just on the verge of wilting, while others were discoloured.  
  
He must've noticed that she was fixated on it, so he laughed. "Apologies. They are not the finest of Vilnius. I picked them from some fields on the way."  
  
Katya managed a nervous, toothy smile. "Thank you, so, so much." Then, she stood at the door, making sure to obstruct Ivan from the visitor's view. Some sort of conversation had to made at the door before either of them noticed something strange.  
  
"Why did you come from so far?" She pouted. "I'm not worth all this effort."  
  
He blinked. "Don't say that, Katenka."  
  
These last few decades had really changed him. He was trying his very hardest to move his face, his muscles, his words into something a little heartfelt. Not for a second did she ever doubt that he was a wonderful person, but a few harsh words from a certain young woman in 1972 had most certainly had their impact. Yekaterina hoped that he didn't expect her to persuade Natasha.  
  
"What's taking so long!" Ivan's voice was not aggressive or angered. It would best be likened to an impatient boy at the dinner table, which she supposed he was. Tolys became catatonic. She reached out to pat his shoulder, but he stepped out with the reflexes that they'd lost in the 1950's.  
  
"Oh, god, what the fuck is he doing here?”  
  
Her first priority was obviously to calm him if she said anything mildly anxiety inducing, then she knew that the situation would boil down into a fistfight or perhaps even more of an overreaction.  
  
"It's not him," she hurried. After this relatively ineffective consolation, she added, "Don't worry!" Perhaps heightening her voice just a smidge on that last phrase would reassure both of them. She wanted to look back at Ivan and see if he was getting angry, but-  
  
"I shouldn't have come," whispered Tolys shakily. "Oh, God, I should've made sure that you were available first. I'm so stupid!"  
  
The pattern here was all too familiar. He would panic and shut down, being of no use for conversation. Katya had never ever learned to deal with situations like these, but there was no way else than for her to either send him off or force him to sit. The latter would be tyrannical.  
  
"Hurry up and go-"  
  
"Tolys." Something had materialised behind her.  
  
God, he walked like a ghost. Not even a single sound as he exited his chair and walked right behind her. All those obnoxious gratings against the floorboards had been avoided. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, shifting to stand between them.  
  
Tolys, to his credit, stiffened and dipped his head. "Sir."  
  
"What are you doing, standing at the door and looking silly? Come in. Katyusha was making a meal for me, but I suppose it can be for us now."  
  
Ordinarily, one would be comforted by this amiability, but to the trained listener, it was a common thing with the man. He often slipped into the tone to stop himself from doing something foolish. A way of tricking himself into feeling less irritated. Something like that from as far as she had observed.  
  
Despite the cynicism that she had so quickly adopted, Yekaterina smiled to herself as she let the guest in. He'd used her nickname.  
  
The Lithuanian had carried little but the flowers, the rest being in a short leather purse of sorts, poking out of his especially deep pockets. The denim that he wore was very old, by the looks of its colour, and she felt sick to her stomach.  He must've truly been looking forward to having a pleasant afternoon with her.  
  
In the slow pace of an executioner to the gallows, Ivan led Tolys to the dinner table, arm around the latter's shoulders. They were truly such a mismatch in the case of height, with the former being at least 8 inches taller than the latter.  
  
She didn't want to get back into her cooking, not when there were two wild cards under her roof. There was no possible angle from which she could watch them while cooking, either. At best, she could tilt her cooking board so that turning to them would be easier.  
  
For several moments, as she segmented the dough into several pieces, there was complete, desolate, and frankly, maddening silence. Tolys occupied her old seat, keeping very much to himself as Ivan stretched out his legs quite comfortably. She didn’t recall him doing the same earlier, so surely this must be a recent show of dominance. God help her to understand this strange game of domination, expressed solely through physical behaviour. Very easily, she could imagine Natalya hissing that this was the reason that she was not a superpower.  
  
The littlest sister was always so defensive.  
  
Either way, she held in a laugh or a shout of ‘please calm down’ or something else that she couldn’t describe. It was a very strong urge nonetheless. After a while, once some of the small doughnuts had been made, the silence began to get aggravating.  
  
“I’ll set these aside,” she said, or rather, announced. “In the meantime, you should drink some tea.”  
  
“Do you have a samovar?” pursued Ivan. It was impossible to tell from his voice whether he was serious. She knew him to be a lover of both the antique, the luxurious, as well as Russian traditionalism, obviously, but it was possible that he had resumed life in the mainstream as a proletariat.  
  
Either way, she most certainly did not have a damned samovar. With a roll of her eyes, she tossed aside the suggestion, and, in a plebian way, put on a regular kettle. The tea that she usually had was quite weak for her brother and probably weaker for Tolys. Her remaining batch of leaves would be exploited swiftly.  
  
“Would any of you like some biscuits?” They were hard, yes, and not particularly extravagant. Loaded with sugar, however, and that was the bare minimum for anything that accompanied tea.  
  
“Please!” answered her first guest quickly. “I’m sure Tolys would want some too.”  
  
The aforementioned had so far, been so quiet that Katya wouldn’t have known if he was alive or not. In a moment of decisiveness, she turned to him as the kettle boiled, just to address him before he had a chance to hop onto Ivan speaking for him.  
  
“Do you want anything?” she said, facing him.  
  
This time, the air in her couldn’t be controlled. She let out a low gasp, much more like a thick inhale. Tolys looked like he had given up entirely on the idea of existing. He stared down at his feet, unaware that he was being spoken to, with the only thing on him that moved being his hands, that pressed violently against his thigh.  
  
Upon having his shoulder tapped, he did not start or show any emotion similar to shock. Instead, he turned to her with a terribly forced smile, keeping his line of sight completely undirected to the man in front of him.  
  
“No biscuits for me, no. I’m quite sick of sugar these days.”  
  
She had to get a little more out of him than that! It was the only method through which she could ascertain if he was near a breakdown.  
  
“You take such strong tea, though! My, you are really something else.”  
  
Tolys gave a nervous, rehearsed laugh, and an equally rehearsed smile. It had been worth a try to get him to crack open like an eggshell, but the situation would’ve been rather different if he were as soft as one. In fact, he probably wouldn’t even be here in that case.  
  
“Tolys. This visit is unexpected for Katya, I see. What occasion brings you here?”  
  
She would admit that the Lithuanian was a lot of things. He was brave to the point of being foolish. Surprisingly no-nonsense. But damn her if she didn’t admit that he was clever. Clever in things like this. Ivan was setting up his landmines just for an excuse to snap.  
  
The temptation to be snarky was so great, she could tell. She would’ve wanted to as well. But Tolys had fallen into that trap too many times to do it again. He forced a much wider smile.  
  
“Just wanted to give her flowers. As a gesture of friendship. I keep a log-book of how often I meet my friends. Noticed that she was a little low on the list.”  
  
He bit his lip. In his monologue of sincerity, he’d set himself up for a tripwire.  
  
“How old am I on this list?” In the unfitting manner of the schoolgirl, he propped up his head on his hand and leant in. What was needed to truly complete the aura was a nice milkshake or a coffee on the table between them. A smile had to be bitten back as she worked on the tea. Then she remembered that it wasn’t some cheap movie.  
  
“Well, I count diplomatic meetings as well, so not too old.”  
  
Even a Soviet officer had to be a little admiring of the tact of the statement. He nodded, and relaxed back into his chair, his smile not vanishing for even a second. “Well, I suppose I would know how long it’s been myself. What a pity. We should definitely have more friendly meetings. Person to person.”  
  
Tolys nodded with a grin and squinted eyes. “Absolutely. Alas, you have a busy schedule.”  
  
“Not as busy as you might think.” He reached for his cup of tea the second his sister placed it on the table.  
  
“I mean, he had the time to surprise me here, so-” interjected Katyusha. Occasionally, she had to strike with well-placed lightness.  
  
“Well, I suppose I’ll consider it then.”  
  
Tolys’ Russian seemed a little poor, not like his usual comfort with the language. His principle of distancing himself from anything non-Baltic would’ve worked had it not been for this time.  
  
Yekaterina brought out her own cup of tea, heavily diluted with milk, and sat on the third side of her table, right opposite the kitchen counter. Ivan on her left and Tolys on her right, blocking the window’s light. It seemed like the most manageable position to prevent the situation from escalating.  
  
“Ivan here came to tell me about-” she paused, before turning to the man mentioned. “Is it confidential?”  
  
Confidential meant nothing in between them, surely, especially news that would soon be public anyway. Regardless, waiting for his answer was a must. It was only somewhat frustrating that he took so long to answer such a silly question.  
  
“I suppose, yes,” he muttered, taking a sip of his drink.  
  
“They’ve made a new Constitution,” she informed.  
  
A bystander could witness Tolys calling on all the forces of heaven and hell, trying to bite back a groan, or a complaint. His lips pressed into a flat line and the muscles of his neck tightened. Implementation was always a pain, but she guessed that it was worse for people that weren’t completely apathetic.  
  
“What, already? It’s already in effect?”  
  
Ivan laughed. “No, no. It’s in the works. They’re not about to scrap it.”  
  
This led Katya to wonder how many had actually already been scrapped, but that was information that she would likely never get. Several curiosities had been repressed since the 20’s. Secretly, she hoped that the number was rather high. Then, she would have a glaring sense of pride.  
  
“When do you think it’ll be implemented?”  
  
“We really can’t be sure,” answered Vanya, very much in the manner of a businessman. “We're estimating October if the drafting committee gets all the necessary approval.”  
  
“Which they would be likely to, right?” she put in. “I mean, you hire only the best for your works.”  
  
Her brother looked at her as if she had dissented, eyes wide and head lifted. Would’ve been very scary if he didn’t deflate so quickly. “Well, yes, but the bureaucrats are troublesome-”  
  
“When are they not?” she joked further. To this, even Tolys quirked the corner of his lip.  
  
This was her last chance to get something out of him. Humour. Not even particularly good humour at that.  
  
“As if you would know anything about bureaucracy, Katya,” commented Ivan, opening his mouth so much more. “When’s the last time you were seen in Kiev?”  
  
She let out an artificial laugh. “Well, I mean, I think the people there would remember better than me. When I do go, it’s usually only for the bars.”  
  
“That makes all of us, I think,” chuckled Tolys.  
  
Oh, if only he’d looked up! The face that her brother made was so marvellous, it was like he had heard a scarecrow heckling. Amusement and paranoia. “Clearly I’m looking after a bunch of degenerates.”  
  
Now, Yekaterina’s laugh was too hearty to be false. “Oh, yes, Vanechka, you’re the one looking after us.” In a moment of bravado, she flicked her hand against his sleeve as a light scolding.  
  
After this action, the officer began to snicker. “Of course! I mean, if you were to be in trouble, it'd be on my orders, after all.”  
  
It was a long, floaty cackle, one that took on a lot of cadence before eventually fading away. Tolys and Katya were noticeably less enthusiastic. Once Ivan had calmed down, he looked like he was on the verge of starting up again.  
  
“More tea, please.” Her hands swiped at the cup clumsily and she ran out from the table.  
  
It had been going so well, and then, suddenly there’s a carpet-bomb. Never in her miserable life did she ever wonder what it would’ve been like, how delightful it would’ve been, to never have started talking at all.  
  
As easy as it was, she couldn’t accept defeat just here. Not when it had been going so well. As she refilled her brother’s mug, she pulled out one of the deadliest weapons in her arsenal. She began to hum a familiar little song, the folk legend of Marichka. It was your very typical love story, the stuff that Shakespeare wrote about, called Romeo and Juliet, and made famous.  
  
Well, there were some subtle differences. For starters, no one died at the end of the song. There was still a sense of longing, however. The hero sings about how someday he will marry his love Marichka, but the song never tells you whether he succeeded. It seemed even more tragic than for them to die.  
  
The promises of love and togetherness, and she never knew if they would be fulfilled.  
  
“Do you recognise this?” she interrupted, after a very long silence.  
  
Katya heard the sound of a mouth opening, the slight click of the motion, but when she turned around it was shut. Eyes squinted. He was thinking, trying to recall. With every passing second, the muscles of his cheeks wound a little tighter.  
  
“Marichka. Used to sing it for you when you were a teenager.”  
  
A nod of realisation. “Right. Continue.”  
  
Toris looked at her like he would at an enchantress offering him eternal joy. In a split second, he turned to look Ivan right in the eye, but surrendered almost immediately, resorting back to his lap for a view. Poor boy, he needed a little more spine than that.  
  
“Alright. Tea. But you aren’t getting more than this.”  
  
“I won’t ask for more.”  
  
She furrowed her eyebrows at him and finished off her own lukewarm drink. The tea was still very strong, very bitter, and it suddenly struck her. The damned honey. She had a jar of it, and it was of the finest quality found anywhere, and yet, she kept forgetting to bring it out.  
  
“How long do you plan to stay?” she asked after a post-sip sigh.  
  
Tolys shrugged, but quickly answered, “I really didn’t have much of a plan, so- I could leave right now.”  
  
“I'll stay at least till sunset.”  
  
It struck her how differently these two talked. One was unsure, ready to be commanded into leaving or staying. The other had it so fixed in his mind that she felt like the intruder.  
  
Part of her knew that if she ever let these two out of her door, she would not see them at it again for a time that she couldn’t even estimate. There was an even smaller chance of having them both in the one room in an informal, unguarded manner. This could not end here. She could not let either of them go.  
  
“Oh, no, I was hoping for you to stay for dinner. It would be really sad for both of you to travel so far, on you own, and leave with an hour of discussion and a mug of tea.”  
  
She sympathised with one of her guests. And if she tried, she could sympathise with Tolys too. With this, it was very easy to conclude that neither of them would like to stay with the other.  
  
But this wasn’t going to make her give in. For the first time in what felt like centuries, she was going to put her own, perhaps selfish, desires above theirs. They would remain in her living room as if there was a padlock on her front door and a guard right outside it. Heavens knew that Ivan deserved to be on the receiving end of that.  
  
Alas, if they just stopped speaking altogether, that would very quickly make her eager to send them both back to a place where they were more useful.  
  
“How have you two been?” she asked the question that should’ve started the chat. “Do you meet Natasha, Raivis, Gilbert-“  
  
Tolys’ foot gently goaded her under the table, and when she looked up at his face, she saw him pleading with her to not go there. With teeth gritted, she pushed his leather away and turned to her brother for an answer. When she didn’t get one immediately, Katya added a little more.  
  
“You know. Don’t you visit them like this for announcements? Don’t they come to see you?”  
  
Ivan shrugged. “Occasionally for diplomatic talks but- you know.” His arms drift across his front as if to insinuate a wall in front of him. “I stand behind my bureaucrats and guards, and so do they.”  
  
A conversational nod. “You don’t visit them personally.”  
  
“No, you don’t really get the time to. There’s always some Russian or-” He huffed. “American business.”  
  
The word was dirty, it almost felt like. All three of them had radios, all three of them heard the news from the West, but none of them said anything, obviously. It felt like mentioning an untimely death at a birthday party.  
  
The way he enunciated it too. It meant that he was ready to unleash a tirade. Would she encourage him- no.  
  
“This is not about- them,” she mumbled. “This is about us. This family.”  
  
Katya bit her tongue. She had uttered the work much, much worse than the A-word. Sometime in the 1800s, she, Natalya and their brother had made an unwritten promise to never use the word while referring to themselves. When they said ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ to one another, it would be in a different, simpler sense.  
  
If they chatted in pairs, the third wouldn’t be considered. Solidarity was frankly, not a good course of action in those days, what with all the revolutions.  
  
Ivan didn’t seem to react, but a single, scathing look for the quarter of a second, was more than enough to tell her what he was thinking. She moved her head, so lightly that it couldn’t be called a shake, but forcefully enough to apologise.  
  
“I suppose so,” said Tolys. He didn’t know. Oh God, he didn’t know.  
  
“I mean, we’re living under one ‘roof’.” He waved his hand over his head. “Union.”  
  
Katya’s nails dug into her palms. So here’s where he decides to get chatty. Not entirely his fault, she supposed. Any ordinary person would’ve thought of it as a gesture of friendship.  
  
Even her brother had begun to lose whatever little affability that he had so far been holding up. He clutched the straps of his bag and leant into his seat, further away from the brunet opposite. His tongue rolled over his lips, perhaps because no words were coming to mind in any case.  
  
"It doesn't matter. As long as we're friends, it's fine."  
  
Friends was a dangerous word as it were, but perhaps more like a pistol than a machine gun. Besides, if they were sitting in her house, drinking her tea and about to eat her pampushky, she had the right to call them friends.  
  
"You should- you should check on the dough, Katenka," says Ivan. "It's ready."  
  
Even though it was a desperate ploy to change the topic, she would pretend, pretend that he was hungry and wanted a taste of the things.  Patting down her unassuming olive dress, she began to work on the actual dumplings themselves. There was no need to be cautious now. No matter what happened, the only thing Tolys could do to dig himself into a deeper hole was to pull a gun on Ivan.  
  
Katya took a quick look towards her guest's side. He carried an old cloth bag that was floppy on the floor. Didn't seem to carry anything larger than a canned product.  
  
On the other hand, there were definitely unexpected things today.    
  
"Vanya, you don't mind poppy seeds, right?"  
  
"Not at all." The reply was brisk.  
  
"If either of you would like to stay the night, that's fine with me as well. There's a cot I have in the garden that I could bring in and sleep on."  
  
One merit of having brought the conversation to a pained level of trepidation was that practically anything was acceptable by now. This question had been, she dared to admit, floating on her mind for a very long time.  
  
Her offer of the cot was, to describe it lightly, a little dubious. Whether it really was out in the garden was something that she hadn't checked beforehand, but even if it didn't she was ready to make a bed out of a chair and the dining table. It was important to be a little flexible in matters.  
  
Before the sun set, the cot had to be brought in and placed. Otherwise, there would be the whole hassle of getting a light and fending off the moths that adored it so much. Ivan opened his mouth to say something, but she'd already gotten out of her seat.  
  
"The night? Katyusha, no." He reached out to grab her hand as she headed to the door, but he wasn't the only one with military reflexes.  
  
She had the chance to make him stay, and she would if it killed her. "Stay," she said, headed out already.  
  
The porch outside her door ended very abruptly, and after a near trip on the stairs, her shoes were embedded in a particularly wet patch of soil right at their base. Nothing like the rural life, she thought.  
  
From the front, she too agreed that her house looked quite meagre, particularly for someone who could easily demand a house the size of the Supreme Soviet building. Hm, at least half of that size. The greediness for land was best left to those that had a lot of it, but for her, her house was perfect.  
  
The greyish blue wood, and the little brown shrubs, but most of all the sprawling backyard, nearly invisible from the road. On this little Eden of land, was a shed, where she kept some necessarily tools for country living, and of course, the cot.  
  
In a security measure perhaps foolish, she always kept the keys hidden under a pile of thick dirt a meter or so away from the shed itself. Anyone around was not afraid to put their hands in some muck, but the fact is that she wasn't scared of 'anyone around' getting into the shed. The officers that lived cosy lives in the city were another, more favourable case.  
  
Under the orange sky and the less powerful sunlight, it was easier to see Tolys through that massive window behind him. When she paced a little to her right, she got a better angle, almost three-quarters. He was talking, and also quite fixated on keeping his hair off his face. The boy should just get it cut, damn it.  
  
What disturbed her the most, however, was that he was talking. Not to himself, not to some spirit, not to a third person that had intruded. He was talking to Ivan. This must be what they called a mother's sense because she felt nothing but dread. Something terrible was going to happen.  
  
It didn't exactly help that Tolys firmly maintained his slightly panicked, consistent look of gloom. It was difficult thus, to tell if the situation truly warranted it.  
  
After a rough few minutes of dragging out the cot, which, in hindsight, was far too big for to fit in the little home she had given it, she found that the task of carrying it back to the house was far easier than it had been when she had placed it there. This was surprising, though, admittedly, she'd be a little more concerned if she couldn't lift it. After all, the last time it was touched was at a bad time.  
  
Katya kicked open her back door, pulled the thing in, and realised that she didn't precisely know of the best place to put it. Such things should've probably been considered before she began the operations.  
  
Damn it.  
  
"Oh, God," she heard Tolys say, and following it immediately was the screech of his chair. With a nervous laugh and a couple of tense adjustments, she managed to get half of its weight in Tolys' hands. That didn't exactly ease a burden of any kind. "I think there might be some space in my room," she informed, tilting the cot sideways.  
  
"Okay, I'll get it there. Let go." Even though it was never her intention, she let go.  
  
He carried into her room as she moved away, shifting to stand next to her brother. He maintained a strict distance from the two of them. From what she assumed (and it came to her acceptance after much difficulty), he hadn't bothered to help at all. She kept her hands folded in front of her, standing like a General's sister as he adopted a thousand yard stare.  
  
Ivan just wasn't used to helping people at all. It wasn't that he was naturally a rather arrogant boy. As an instinct faster than swatting away a fly, she pinched the thin skin that covered the veins at the back of her hand. More often than not, the voice in her head would excuse and console him. Tolys himself had pointed this out after a bottle of brandy and a rejection back in the 60's.  
  
In her heart, she knew that she wouldn't convince anyone that her brother was an angel, a great man, the finest of his breed. Even 'Tasha believed it almost as a long inside joke. How could anyone consider him to be foul, though?  
  
After a couple of uncomfortable minutes of silence, there's a call that echoes poorly through the house. "Got it in, but getting into bed might be a little hard!"  
  
An engineered laugh. "Thank you. I don't need to worry about that; I think."  
  
If she had had a bigger house, a bigger room, and a few more makeshift beds, it would've been nice to invite all the satellites over, if only for a few days of talking and domestic chatter before they returned to their lives. It would feel like an alternate reality, as if the real year, the real date, and the real time didn't matter one bit.  
  
Heavens knew that keeping track of the date as a nation was tiresome as it were.  
  
They returned to the table, and she began to finally begin cooking the doughnuts that had so far, not been given the attention that they needed. Although she found herself occasionally slowing to listen to the movement behind her, there was nothing said, only the light flipping of pages. Ivan had finally begun to use that book that she was certain only meant to serve as a point of conversation.  
  
Tolys watched her cook, and about fifteen minutes into the process, asked if she needed any help. That was when she realised that it was probably best for her to be their goddamn chaperone. but dinner, or a substitute thereof, had to be prepared regardless of how much she wanted to babysit.  
  
With two pairs of hands making the little dumplings, they had around 15 or so in just half an hour. Some of them were a little crude, with uncomfortable creases in the dough, but as it became crisp and flaky, the physical aspect would be of minimal concern. During the waiting time, like an impatient schoolmaster, Katya flicked the two of them with metaphorical rulers and asked them to pay attention.  
  
“You must make sure to visit for Christmas,” she said matter-of-factly. “I may not be a Premier or anything, but I do have the leverage of sending some unemployed fellow from Kiev to any of you and dragging you here by your coats.”  
  
Empty threats were a delight that she no longer used so frequently. Mainly because her stupid, cheeky smile would ruin the effect. Vanya feigned a considerable amount of terror and nodded, “Yes, mama.” Sometimes, it did her a world of good to threaten.  
  
All along, as she talked about the weather, the moral character of the movies that had come out at the time. What could be christened as street talk. Once the painstaking little pampushky were done, there was the lapse in conversation that was truly a delight to hear. As Tolys and Ivan ate, they abandoned all their manners, if there were any, that were used at state dinners and dining with dignitaries.  
  
Vanya himself took down at least 7 of the things before conceding defeat. Tolys came through with 4, and she was content with whatever remained. Eventually, the last was split in a gooey mess between the siblings.  
  
By the time the sun was completely down, and a string of lightbulbs came alive in flickers, all of them were too defeated to partake in the washing of dishes or the cleaning up of faces. Slow and steady, each one took their own plate, only their own, and placed it near the sink.  
  
There remained the larger family plate, which, while Katya wiped the table, Ivan disposed of.  
  
For a moment, she thought she could see a third shape, a thinner, lankier girl tidying up with the two of them. It was replaced with the image of Toris, placing his flowers in the centre of the table.  
  
"I should go now, right?"  
  
Katya made a noise inhuman and proceeded to hug him and rub his back and even get a few tears in her eyes. There was a sliver of a chance to make him stay longer, maybe break out some wine, but there was a third person in the room that had to be considered when alcohol came up.  
  
“Do you have a train planned or something?”  
  
Always one for the spontaneous, frankly. He laughed and shook his head. Then, for several seconds, he didn’t make an address. She had to raise her eyebrows in a short panic before he opened his mouth. “I’ll figure it out.”  
  
“No, you most certainly will not!” she scolded.  
  
She had a bed, and now she had a cot. And if there was anything else needed, the chair would make do. Sure, it was a bit risky, to say the least, having the two of them under one goddamned roof, and that too for a night still young. The best way to handle this was to pull him aside.  
  
“Tolys, you’re not going anywhere. Stay,” she whispered to him while Ivan took a smoke break.  
  
The last few shards of that sputtering and stuttering Liet that she had seen in the beginning of his presence here returned. Now that all they had to depend on was the bulbs for light, the entire house became much less golden, much more grey.  
  
“Don’t make me stay, Katyusha-” he whimpered.  
  
With tight lips and a firm grip on his hand, she inhaled sharply. “If he tries anything, I’ll take care.”  
  
“How much can you do?” His voice was getting almost too loud to be safe.  
  
“Enough,” she assured, more so herself than him. If Ivan did have an incident in the middle of the night, something she had heard he was quite prone to, she did have a pistol hanging around in that old closet somewhere. Her brother would be considerably weaker on land that was- in the end- hers.  
  
Just stay here, you bastard.  
  
Tolys’ eyebrows did a series of acrobatics. First remorse, then surprise, and then bitterness. Eventually, once they calmed, he made one thing very clear. “Whatever room he’s in, I’m not.” Oh, good. For a moment, she thought that he’d forgotten to make her life difficult.  
  
A small part of her wanted to play a light game of guilt. She’d moved in that cot for a guest, not for herself. It would be a shame if all her work had been just for herself. But the last thing she wanted was for Tolys to lose his stability more than he already had.  
  
“Fine. I’ll sleep inside. You just stay here on the table.”  
  
“If it’s your table, it’ll be pretty comfortable.”  
  
“Hey. Decide which sister you’re going for.”  
  
His face fell, and she wondered why it had to pop out so soon. It was a shame that the two women that he knew the best would both guarantee him an unsavoury brother in law. Life was cruel to him.  
  
After the smoke break, there was a lack of discussion. Just an awkward realisation that nothing in her wardrobe would be suitable as nightwear for either of them. They were not to blame for wearing dress shirts, in Tolys' case, constrained by suspenders.  
  
Ivan would sleep in his own clothes, he announced, even before she could think of an alternative. He shuffled into the room that no one truly marked as his. Then came the soft thud of his massive form against a cot barely able to hold it.  
  
She eyed Tolys with a smirk, before letting out an "oh!" and rushing in after him. "Vanushka! Take my bed."  
  
It was quite amusing to see that he'd already settled in quite well, making use of the thing bedsheet that hung on the nails of her cupboard. Once she got herself in a position to face him, she was standing in a corner, landlocked by the two beds.  
  
'Vanya!" she called.  
  
He stirred immediately, but not a part of him moved save for his eyes. They opened like the flash of a camera.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You weren't asleep, were you?"  
  
"No," he said, very dazed.  
  
"Use my bed, no? It's much comfier."  
  
"I'm sick of comfy beds. I have too many."  
  
The most bizarre complaint she had ever heard, and before she could even ball up her fists and yank his bedsheets off, he had already closed his eyes and gone off to his own strange little dreamland.  
  
Maybe he saw his utopia there.  
  
The temptation to go for the covers, the lowest trick in the book, was so great, and her hands had already begun to grip at the covers near his feet. Just as it moved past his neck, she stopped. He wasn’t wearing his scarf. Katya stepped out of her little corner and pulled the bed sheets back, so as to cover the entire lower half of his face.  
  
“Tolys,” she called out. “Will you be alright here?”  
  
“Are you going to sleep now?”  
  
“Well, no.” Not if he wanted her to.  
  
For a moment he brightened, his hands scratching at the nape of his neck. She quirked her brows and spread her hands as to demand some response. Eventually, all he did was sit down, and brush off some crumbs that they hadn’t addressed. “You should get your sleep.”  
  
Katya processed the advice, frowned. This was something that she wasn't opposed to, but not what she wanted from him. Now would've been a great time to bring out the alcohol.  
  
"What did you think of today? Pretty alright, right?"  
  
It was a conversation they came back to. She came back to all the time.  
  
He shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose so. It's only because you're here."  
  
"It's not!" She smacked her hands on the table. "If the rest of you don't even bother to talk to him, how do you expect that he's going to be nice to you?"  
  
"You think we don't try?"  
  
"I know you don't try!"  
  
There were faint noises of moaning from the bedroom, and her last sentence was cut off abruptly. They both kept their ears ready for any more noises. If he woke up, she knew that he would take a while to go off to sleep again, and they would lose this time.  
  
It was a momentary break in the snoring. It was heard again soon enough.  
  
"I don't want to talk, I want to sleep," said Tolys firmly. "Good night."  
  
With a silent half- mind to force him to stay up, Katya picked up the flowers and kept them on a smaller, much less sturdy table that was used for nothing but the mail. It shivered under the weight, the wood creaking, but eventually, it steadied itself. Coming the next morning would be the tedious task of finding a vase and place for them.  
  
Admittedly, she had little recollection of the night afterwards aside from the fact that Tolys and she engaged nothing more than some night's greetings before going off to sleep. Ivan had been about an hour into his slumber before Katya caught a wink herself.  
  
The last thought she had was trying to convince herself that everyone in the house was dreaming, and that she would too.  
  
When she did wake up, she was greeted by her left cheek burning. A single finger went to touch it and found that it was red-hot. The little beam of light that entered through her door crack drew a straight line against her bed, that spanned across her cheek.  
  
As part of the routine for herself as well, she made some eggs, breaking six instead of two. There was no one in the house, but she knew that they wouldn't have left. Ivan's satchel stayed outside the bedroom, the contours of his book still very clear.  
  
Ivan arrived long after she began eating. He looked so much better than when he had first entered, having lost the hat and the coat and the frown.  
  
"Tolys just left."  
  
"Hm?" Her eyes darted from Ivan to the third helping of breakfast. "Were- were you talking to him outside?"  
  
"Yes. Just telling him that he'll be getting a formal letter about the new Constitution."  
  
"Right," mumbled Katya with a mouthful of bread. "What about me, though?"  
  
Ivan picked up his coat, wrangled with it for a bit, and popped a little corner of his toast in his mouth. "No. I've already told you."  
  
"Weren't you going to visit him later, too-" Before she could finish the last word, Ivan had decisively shaken his head.  
  
They ate for a bit in silence, mostly because Katya was a bit too confused to say anything. Halfway through her own meal, her brother's plate was empty.  
  
"Train at noon," he clarified.  
  
Without much else to say, he got up, pushed the chair back in, and disposed of the two plates left untouched. Katyusha wanted to laugh. He'd eaten Tolys' share too.  
  
Once she was done with her own food, she followed suit and accompanied him to the door, as was custom. He dipped the Soviet hat to her, let her give him a peck on the cheek, and set off.  
  
He hummed something as he left, she thought. Something that sounded familiar. 


	3. star.

The humane realm of Anglican offspring,   
It will cause its realm to hold to peace and union:   
War half-captive in its enclosure,   
For long will it cause them to maintain peace.   
-42, Century X   
  
Natalya found her hands tracing patterns on her windows. As the passerby went about their business, it was somewhat tempting to blow on the glass and rub it out furiously. Not to mention that the streets had a  kind of life to them that she had missed for a long while. Back in Minsk, her apartment was getting torn down. Whatever she wanted to preserve was in a crate by her, so tightly sealed with brown tape that it would probably have to be ripped apart.   
  
Eventually, a car would stop, and she would peek out to see if it was anyone worth noting, and then retreat from the window. Eye contact was to be avoided, even from two stories up. The last thing she wanted in her moments with him was solitude.    
  
Regardless of how much delight she’d got from it at first, she discovered that it was nearly noon, and some arrangement for food had to be made. She went over to her brother’s room and asked him if he wanted to eat, which he refused immediately. He asked her how she expected him to eat, and she apologised.   
  
Back to the window, it was.   
  
How many days had she spent like this? The news kept coming in droves. The first was that of the wall, naturally, but it soon followed that the Baltics had revolted, Hungary was free, and the world was crumbling. That was not what the news said, that was what she gathered.   
  
Eventually, by 2, she opened her eyes to feet. Well, right in her line of sight was the bottom of the apartment’s front door, which was elevated enough to see the shoes of the person behind it. As a measure of caution, she would always inspect the shoes before opening the door, making sure to herself stand far, far away.   
  
With not even the slightest stamp of her bare feet, she crouched at the door, taking a look at the reflective and cut out part of the shoe.   
  
There were sets of shoes that she could recall very easily. Most of the women around, young, middle-aged and old, who wore the same kind of traditional, flat shoes, usually of a dark blue leather. Men wore light grey boots. If they were poor, the shoes would be tattered. If they were rich, the shoes would also be tattered.   
  
These were not familiar. Pointed, in brown leather, covered by quite ill-fitting beige fabric. In her already retracted position, she began to head backwards, causing her legs to exert themselves for the first time in months. Maybe it was finally some man from the railways forcing her out of this house.   
  
“Hello! Anyone?” The doorbell had stopped working back in the eighties, which was a blessing, frankly. But the particularly loud guests that the two of them got on occasion made the best of this opportunity.   
  
While picking herself up, she kept her eyes on the door, half expecting it to explode. Neither of them was in the mood for visitors, but in the various repetitions of greetings that she heard, this guest was persistent.   
  
A clenched fist and the second on her collar. All she had to do was say a quick ‘fuck off’. Wasn’t as though she couldn’t fight anyone here. She threw open the door and opened her mouth to curse. And saw those eyes. They were not like anything she’d seen before. They were happy.   
  
Nothing about this visitor was something that she knew. He wore a long beige coat that looked custom sewn, over matching pants. His hair was slicked back with disinterest, as it had begun to rebel and form little hills of volume. His face was clear save for a few extra wrinkles around his mouth. Rimless glasses. Eyes a sickly, unnatural brightness. She didn’t like any of it.   
  
Her mouth remained open until he pointed at it wordlessly.   
  
“What do you want?” In her best attempts to be aggressive, she found that her throat was quite hoarse after several days of speaking two or three words at a time. Not the best impression that she could make.   
  
This time, he opened his mouth with delight, keeping his eyes wide for a strange second. Then he deflated.   
  
“Sorry, doll,” he said in an accent like oil. “I don’t know any more Ruski.”   
  
It amazed her that the accent bothered her more than the language. English. She was familiar with it, perhaps not enough to be an academic, but enough to know how to drive someone away.   
  
“Why are you here?” she managed.   
  
“I’m here to meet a friend. And I think you just might know who that is.”   
  
Regardless of how little she felt at the time, it was not difficult to snicker at the time. Her brother was turning her away, and yet, this stranger that was nowhere near amicable, he would be the one that Ivan would immediately be a hotelier to.   
  
“Are you here on official business?”   
  
He leant against the doorframe, and she stepped back. “I guess you could say that.”   
  
It was easy to let people like the local officers go without much guilt or nervousness. But there were times when the people that she admonished were, in one way or another, not the kind of people it was recommended to send away.   
  
Occasionally she would get a scolding for sending away a diplomat or so. Wasn’t her fault that they looked like jackasses.   
  
“I need proof,” she managed.   
  
“Proof?” He looked genuinely confused, and she wondered if it was the wrong word. “Oh, well, uh, I have my passport.”   
  
“That’ll do.”   
  
Out of the four pockets on his coats, he goes through each one, taking an excruciatingly long time to find a 30-page booklet. “There we go-” He kept it with him, but showed its front to her.   
  
Natalya didn’t know which one was worse. The eagle or the words.   
  
“Go back to the shithole you came from.” While her pronunciation was a little weak on the words that held the most sentiment, the message seemed to get through. She threw her entire weight onto the door to shut it. And then there was little left to do besides breathe a sigh of relief.   
  
The door was open a crack.   
  
It seemed like there was something wrong with it. In the small arrow of light that made it through into the apartment, there was dust floating around. Natalya pushed herself against it harder, almost ready to fall on it.   
  
The door didn’t budge. She wasn’t sure how it was possible but was quite certain that she had broken the door in one way or another. This would add to their list of worries that had so slowly been building up till now.   
  
“Still here.” For just half a second, she released the door and looked around the crack, waiting to see some reinforcements that had arrived. If the Americans were landing at this time, maybe in droves, as that was their usual tactic- she was ready to swallow anything in the house that would kill her.    
  
The visitor was keeping the door open with no strain on his face. No strain anywhere. The only part of him that touched the door was the little finger of his right hand. It was his door-stop. Natasha stared at him with mild interest and milder shock. In the moment that she took to look down if he was holding it with his foot, the door knocked her back in a quick series of foot taps.   
  
“You don’t want to be turning me away,” he said, almost as though he was hurt.   
  
She had half a mind to pounce on him and drag him to the ground before he got anywhere near the door of the bedroom.   
  
Her feet had already positioned themselves perfectly for its execution. Then he entered the room. Surely he wore too many layers for the temperate weather, but anyone involved in politics knew that looking big was always better. Already a little taller than she was, he wore the thickest coat she’d ever seen, on a frame already overweight. Even if she wanted to, it wouldn’t have been easy to reach his head and pull it down.   
  
The least she could do was block the path he was taking. In the short door frame before the corridor began, she spread out her arms and legs like a starfish and became a barrier.   
  
“My brother does not want to see anyone right now!”   
  
He paused. She was victorious.   
  
“Is that what he’s calling you? His sister? Cute. Wish I’d thought of that.”   
  
“Thought of what?”   
  
A chuckle. “I’m about to blow your mind. He’s not your brother. He is immortal, and you are not.”   
  
So far, it had been just slightly annoying to have him in the house unexpected. She was not too concerned with him being a threat to either of them. Things changed after the finger and the door. But this was the straw on the- was it a horse’s back?   
  
“How do you know this?” she asked, still keeping the shreds of her human facade. “What do you mean?”   
  
The look that he adopts is that of pity. Perfectly turned up eyebrows, a pursed pair of lips and a hand on her shoulder. “God, I don’t want to spoil his fun for ya, but- he’s- been alive since- what, the seventh century?”   
  
“And I’ve been since the eighth,” she hissed. “Fucking brat.”   
  
It was surprisingly nice to see his pathetic little face twist up in confusion. It was even more satisfying for him to take a couple of steps back, with that beautiful expression untouched. It melted away on the third step. And he laughed, and she was pissed off again. “Oh, is the town just swarming with you guys?”   
  
“I hope not,” she muttered through gritted teeth. Having a couple of immortals always at her ass was more than enough.   
  
“And what landmass do I have the pleasure of meeting?”   
  
“White Russia.”   
  
“He’s white enough, I don’t think there needs to be a separate one.”   
  
She’d heard the stories about how stupid Americans were, but most of it, she was levelheaded enough to know as propaganda. She believed it , she did. But only a little bit. Now she was convinced of it.   
  
“Belarus. The Belarusian SSR. Heard of it?”   
  
“Oh-” He snapped and pointed. “Thought it was a province of Russia. A pleasure to meet you.”   
  
If anything, she would’ve liked to have spat at his extended hand. “What are you doing here, and why?”   
  
“I came for a meeting, didn’t I tell you? I get it’s a little- surprise! But- whatever. Some people like surprises.”   
  
“I don’t, and neither does the person you want to meet.”   
  
In the soft light of a faint afternoon, his entire right side was bright. He smiled, and it was as though all of him was. “Don’t recall tellin’ ya who I came to meet.”   
  
“There are two possibilities, and I’ve never seen you before in my life.”   
  
Without being invited to, he took a seat on the decrepit couch that was intended to be charming. It was the same place that she had whiled away her months and days. It was insulting to see him in the same place. She did not sit with him, but rather, stamped angrily.   
  
“I want you to leave. I assure you that whoever you are meeting does not want to be disturbed. So fuck off.” Ending a sentence so difficult to construct with profanity was her speciality. It was never truly appreciated.   
  
“Listen, I really didn’t want to bring this up.” He said, with the nonchalance of liars. “But you don’t have a choice in this. You meaning- only you. This is business between me 'n’ him.”   
  
As if their business was something secretive or dirty, for five decades, it’d been plastered on every newspaper stand in the world, for anyone to read. “I know all about your business. Anything you tell him will come to me sooner or later.”   
  
He made a very long, odd blink. As if she’d said something completely mind-boggling. Another fucking laugh, loud and throaty and vibrato.   
  
“God, doing spy stuff for so long has really fucked with us all, hasn’t it. I’m not giving him some secret information! I’m just having a chat.”   
  
“Have it with me in the room then.”   
  
“No. It’d ruin the moment.”   
  
“Listen, cocksucker. This isn’t your moment. This isn’t your place. Whatever you gotta do, I’ll be there.”   
  
“You’re a stubborn gal, aren’t ya?” He pushes his glasses up his nose and leans in towards her. “Fine, but when I’m talking, you’ll listen and add comments afterwards. Cool?”   
  
It was like talking to a character out of a fairytale. The big bad wolf of sorts. “Cool? It’s not that cold.”   
  
“No- like- never mind.”   
  
With a stretch, he left the sofa and headed toward the corridor, while she slinked behind him. Maybe her brother wasn’t even awake; a most relieving thought. After some grumbling, he would lock himself in without protest, and it would all be futile. And when that would happen, it would be delicious.   
  
Taking whatever ghost of an invitation he had received, the American strutted up to the bedroom’s corridor, but took a moment to admire the few remaining photographs that hung there. It was the only wall in the house strong enough to withstand a couple of nails through it, with subpar hammers.   
  
“I recognise this guy,” he commented, pointing at a picture of Stalin. “The rest- I dunno.”   
  
It was truly remarkable. Either he was truly an absolute imbecile, or he was playing into a cruelly irritating persona. But judging by the blankness on his face, it was definitely the former. Every moment made her want to relinquish her life more.   
  
“That’s Krushchev. Didn’t he give you problems in the sixties?”   
  
“Right- of course. Isn’t Nikita a girl’s name?”   
  
It would be so quick. So quick to grab a knife and slash his throat. While she held herself straight and dreamed of it happening, the States had already pressed his ear against the door.   
  
“No signs of intelligent life.”   
  
Without much time to consider the words, she pushed him out of the way and looked through the ends of the doorway. Like all the things in this flat, the door was not very well built, and privacy was never a guarantee. Nat had come to an agreement with her brother, that she would look at him through the crease, and that he would pretend that she didn’t. It was a healthy choice for the both of them.   
  
Now with this bastard, this walking missile around, it wasn’t long before she would be not as welcome in Vanya’s eyes. When she was looking, she did see the corner of a fairly upright arm.   
  
“I’ll get him, you stay. Say nothing till I look at you.”   
  
He nods, under the ruse that he was the intention to obey. As a necessary precaution, she pushes him aside, making sure that the door is perfectly clear for anyone who’d want to barge out. Then, with a prolonged pause, and a hand hovering at her cheek. she knocked on the door.   
  
“Vanya!” she called, her voice going an octave higher, as it did.   
  
Regardless of the warning to stay back, the guest resumed his position of pushing himself against the door and pretending as though sounds travelled well through wood. There was a shift then a rustle. And the slow drawl of a ‘come in’ was soon heard. In many ways, it was a success.   
  
The guest was seeming to make a move, but she pinched his arms and scowled best she could. “I thought I told you.”   
  
With a sheepish sort of smile, as if to elicit sympathy, he backed away. He was trying very much to pretend to be a child, that much she could tell. She hated children.   
  
The room that her brother chose to spend most of his days in, was- in his defence, a nice one. Obviously, the best kept in the house, and the largest, and the most well furnished. He cleaned it himself, which was really the bulk of their workings in the day. All the furniture was things left over from the old house in Stalingrad. And as for the largest room in the house, she wouldn’t let him have anything less.   
  
The curtains were drawn, not a single lamp switched on- and nothing for a source of light besides whatever came when she opened the door. Her blue dress seemed to disappear into the whole picture. At least she got to see her brother.   
  
It had been around 2 days since the last time, which was definitely all that she was willing to estimate.   
  
He didn't look much worse for wear. In fact, no one had changed in appearance besides her, having chopped off her hair so that it didn't go past her ear. Now, it was growing back steadily, but faster than she was used to.   
  
"You don't even look tired," she remarked, moving in front of his desk. It was as close as she could get, but still, it made her feel like she was not his sister, but rather some lady coming with official business. Which she probably was in this context.   
  
"I know you're not going to like this," she mumbled. "But we have a visitor."   
  
He could've been asleep for the previous two sentences, and she wouldn't have known. But he woke up as though he'd just heard of a fire in the house. "What visitor?"   
  
The dirty word. The A-word. She stood there trying to think of ways to dodge around it, ways to prevent an outburst that would almost certainly destroy the 1902 antique table. Plenty of such squabbles had already destroyed chairs and tables at the United Nations.   
  
"Do you have the energy?" she opted. Maybe this could be shut down before it started.   
  
Ivan pressed his lips together, fidgeted with his hands, but cleared up his table and straightened his scarf. "I do. Better not get people antsy."   
  
Had he been like this for several days on end? Was it her fault, that she had never asked- or was he simply making an exception for an outsider? Each possibility sent waves of boiling air through her oesophagus. It felt like something was going to come up.   
  
"Should I send him in?"   
  
And before her brother could bring himself to agree, there were already footsteps in the room, as obnoxious as their owner. "Heard I was invited," he said, in terribly accented Russian. God, she wished that he wouldn't open his mouth as wide.   
  
"Hey, friend," he reverted to his own tongue, as though he'd heard her prayers. "Did ya miss me? Long two months without talk."   
  
Her brother knew this bastard. Of course, as an international scapegoat, he had to know people as insufferable as this, but to think that either of them felt welcome to visit from the blue. The American took off his jacket, tossed it over his chair and took the seat like a dignitary. Ivan relaxed in his larger armchair, his hands cracking their knuckles.   
  
She wasn’t too sure about all that body language rubbish that international leaders swore by while making impressions, but she knew that bigger was better. Standing right behind the guest’s chair, as some kind of statue watching over him, she paid close attention to the way her brother moved, blinked, shifted his head as they shook hands.   
  
There was no one he was going to be humiliated now.    
  
“Natasha, you may go,” he managed, in the kind of words he hadn’t used in awhile.    
  
“No, no, let her stay! I sort of- promised her that she could. Protective sister ya got there.”   
  
A diplomatic smile. “You know her charms.”   
  
With the crisp close of that sentence, the conversation ran out fuel from a plane over the ocean. Both of them were forced to sit in the silence for the better half of two minutes, during which they just stared.    
  
“Oh. Oh, gosh, where are my manners. You must be wondering why I stopped by.”   
  
A crook in her brother’s smile, and a hand on his cheekbones. “Yes. Enlighten me.”   
  
If she knew the answer, then surely Ivan did as well. Americans never bothered with flights and diplomacy unless they had something to win.   
  
“I just- felt like it was a little douchebag-ish to not have a face to face. After 40 years of hell for the both of us, it felt right.”   
  
“It wasn’t hell,” she said quickly, causing the guest to jump.   
  
“Christ. Even if you do like being around me, one foot or more, please.”   
  
Her nose wrinkled in disgust. If she could not watch over him, she would stand by her brother. In the time that it took for her to move, Ivan was looking off to the side, almost disinterested.    
  
“Okay, time to talk business. Now that the whole- war is over-”   
  
Immediately, she could feel the muscles of her and her brother’s necks tensing. If she had paid closer attention, she would’ve heard a gulp.   
  
“I think it’s time we make amends!” Her hands tightened around the sides of her brother’s chair.   
  
The large beast in front of her, having been so tired so quickly, suddenly woke again, and finally gave the American what was coming to him. A sneer and a cold, immediate look. Something that would not bow.   
  
“And so, after 50 years of pointless aggression, you concede,” spat Ivan. “I refuse.”   
  
The least that she could do to support his words was to pat him on the shoulder, but her ever unwelcome hand was brushed off. Surely, the United States was not expecting such an unpleasant welcome, even if that was all that they deserved.   
  
“Oh, I think you misunderstand me greatly.” With a scooch against his chair for comfort, he placed both his elbows onto the table, right above some unimportant papers strewn there. The legs of the chair screeched, and the two were suddenly just half a foot apart. It had happened in such a sequence that she didn’t have time to scowl.   
  
He removed his gloves painfully slow, as if to waste every bit of time that he had scraped together for the chat. Under the gloves were fingers comically pale and venous. The cold rarely suited the Westerners, or so she’d heard, and from this, it was not untrue.   
  
“By the way,” he chuckled. “All those conferences and I never caught your name.”   
  
“You don’t need my name.”   
  
“Aw, shucks, don’t be like that. You can have my name!”   
  
The recently exposed hand was jabbed in her brother’s face. “Rickie Foster. Good to meet ya.”   
  
She snorted. It was clear, and it was quite a break in the peace of the room so far. But God help her. The world’s superpower would be called something like ‘Rickie’. As she tightened her lips to step another damned noise getting out of her, she waited to see if- Rickie- would get offended.   
  
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Yeah, honey, I know it’s weird. C’est la vie. Is that what you say here too?”   
  
“Ignore her,” said her brother quickly, and for once, those words didn’t sting. He had good reason to utter them, of course.   
  
“Either way. If you don’t tell me your name, I’m sure someone will. Anyway- I wanted to make a friend.”   
  
They were not comfortable with English as it was, but she could tell that even her brother had begun to doubt his prowess in the language. Because surely, the foulest demon that all of the propaganda had ripped apart, was not coming here for- friendship.   
  
What an anticlimax.   
  
“If this is- some meagre need to continue a game that’s over, you’ll have to try it with someone else. I’m quitting.”   
  
Rickie sighed. “I’m kind of hurt that this is just a game to ya. Thought we had something special.”   
  
"If several escapades on the brink of destruction are something special, then I suppose we did," said her brother robotically. It was as though these were words he read off a prompter. He was never unprepared. Unlike the American fool that fumbled on any other word, replaced it with something that would never be acceptable to a summit.   
  
"If that isn't special, I don't know what is!" He gave out a crackling, shaky laugh as if there was some great banter that they were doing. Each vibrato caused Natalya's fists to clench even further, and soon, there was no feeling left in her hands.   
  
"But, okay, okay, between superpowers-" He leant in as close as he could. "I think we both know that this is not the end of the story. We have a future."   
  
"Do we?"   
  
"We're like two rats whose tails got stuck together and can't let go. You know what they call that?"   
  
Occasionally, in the worst of winters and the murkiest of summers, you would find rats everywhere, chewing at the ropes that held together homes, and the food that was so hard to procure in the first place. Where there were alive rats, there would soon be dead ones, and rats have the terrible habit of dying together.   
  
Both she and her brother were quiet for a bit too long, so Rickie felt the need to intervene. "Maybe y'all have a word for it, but back home- it's called a rat king. Think that's very fitting, right? A few puny little things can become kings."   
  
"You're looking too into it," she said quickly, and all the blood left his cheeks.   
  
"I guess I am. You find way too many things like that to think about when you're waiting around for crisis updates."   
  
"I prefer to work field. So I don't relate."   
  
"Some kids just don't have that privilege, baby."   
  
“So you don’t fight in wars yourself?” Natalya poked. “Strange.”   
  
“Don’t think I never did,” he admitted. “After a small- PR disaster back in the 40’s, we decided that it was for the best to have me behind the lines.“   
  
She hated herself for being intrigued. For a moment, maybe if she was a different person and he was a Russian, she would want to know what happened. As if there was nothing personal. Would’ve made for a good talk over a cup of piss-water tea.    
  
“Anyway, anyway, back to the whole rat king metaphor!” He tapped the table for the attention that he already he had. “What I meant was, that we, as rat kings, are still going to be pals after this.”   
  
Her head began to ache, and her lean on the chair got a little more forceful. As she slid her hand along the thin armrest, her brother’s hand piled on it. And stayed.    
  
“We were not friends. I don’t know where you’re getting that idea,” he managed, his voice already too infirm.    
  
“And don’t call my brother a rat like yourself!” she added.   
  
Once again, her brother’s hand left her. She was always by his side, and always backing up whatever he said, and he was like a kite for a hawk, always fluttering just a bit too far away from her. She only wished he’d be on her side for any more than a few minutes.   
  
“Never said either of us was a rat. We’re rat kings. We see our men scurrying around like morons who think this shit matters. But in the end, it’s always just you and me.”   
  
“Are you calling me a rat, then?” Her voice had nearly cracked.   
  
“Don’t deny it! You’re just like any other bureaucrat we have ‘round here.”   
  
Her nails were ragged and unkempt and foul. If they managed to get through his skin, even if it was just a millimetre deep, it would infect- and he would be sick, and it would be so painful. She was ready to lunge for it, but a thick arm found it’s way right against her abdomen, and she was thrown back several feet. All she would do was growl in the direction of America, and hope that whatever message she had in mind came through.   
  
“There is no need to bring all the beasts of the wild into this,” said Ivan calmly. “I refuse to cooperate with you beyond the bare minimum of civilised nations.”   
  
“Yeah, I’ve always loved that phrase. Civilised nations, as if we’re some pacifist pricks. But that’s mean. I’ve been nothing but help to all my friends.”   
  
She had to let out another cackle, forcing it out for greater effect. It was the same as watching one of those terrible play shows that would only be performed behind reinforced doors. Rickie was a caricature of himself.   
  
“Alright, so maybe they would have some customer feedback, but in the end- feedbacks makes me better.” He batted his eyelashes as if to win the affection of a crowd.   
  
“You’re about as faithful as a businessman,” said Ivan calmly. “Which is why I refuse to trust you.”   
  
“You seem to have a knack for it, though. Trusting the wrong people. China.”   
  
“China was never a matter of trust-”   
  
“Oh, please. All of us nations are fucking idiots who want friends! Stop trying to be the better person!”   
  
Natalya was almost entirely obscured by the back of her brother’s seat, cowering a few centimetres above her usual height. That shit-eating face of his, when twisted in irritation, was not the most pleasant of sights.   
  
“Bottom line is that I want to do things on my own, and you can fuck off,” Vanya pronounced, and she looked on in amazement. Finally, he was beginning to sound like something other than a meek little boy.   
  
“Oh, bringing out the best in your arsenal.”   
  
With an unconcerned push away from the table, Rickie got himself up, put his jacket back on, and began to pace, letting his legs get their underserved stretch. After this brief exercise, he went back to the table and knocked over the chair with a flick of the palm.   
  
“This is what I was talking about. We just don’t get along,” breathed her brother, without moving his face for even a second.   
  
“I hate to use this line. I really do. But you don’t have a choice in this. Your economy, whatever puny thing it was, is now going to becoming even worse. I helped Germany after the war. And I’m ready to help you. What do you say?”   
  
“Help him how?” she asked, even though she knew the answer quite well. “We don’t want money.”   
  
“I have too much. And I’m willing to help out. A gesture of goodwill. Makes me part of your history books.”   
  
She highly doubted that German children grew up learning about the great land that was America, but she could forgive that. What Natalya couldn’t forgive was the ‘too much’ bit.   
  
“If you have too much, why don’t you shove it up your-”   
  
“Tasha, enough. Expletives can come later,” warned Ivan.   
  
“If you don’t want to take it, that’s alright. Could’ve used it. I have a second purpose here as well.”   
  
Rickie waited for a few moments, eyeing the broken down chair in the corner. “Good God, my manners. Sorry. Sometimes I get a little excited.”   
  
He mentioned this but didn’t pick it up. All that he managed was a somewhat pitiful look in its direction and an unamused turn back to the two of them. Natalya bristled as he reached into his pocket, her hands immediately moving to shield her brother from the coming hail of bullets.   
  
Rickie pulled out a tangled mess of wires, about the size of an eyeball. “Happy?” he said to it. Keeping the thing in one hand, he smashed his palms together, and left the emancipated and sparkling collection of wires on the floor of the carpet, which she was sure would catch fire for a moment.   
  
Didn’t. Damn.   
  
“God, I want to kill something every time I go through that. Listen, everything I just told you is bullshit.”   
  
There were moments like these. Sometimes, when you were required to wear spectacles that weren’t for you, you had to squint, and the entire room would be oily and blurry. This was one of those times. If this was a dream or a nightmare of any kind, she would be so annoyed when she woke up!   
  
Equally annoyed when she didn’t.   
  
“I don’t give a shit about you, and I really don’t want to help you. I had to say that for my President.”   
  
From the calm and suave man that had first walked into their mediocre little apartment,t he had become a bouncy and flustered man trying desperately to defend himself with a butter knife.   
  
“Now we can finally get down to the business. You lost. And I get to taunt you.”   
  
Natalya scoffed. She scoffed and she sniffed and she hissed and she murmured all the unholy things she’d picked up in the 13th century.   
  
“I was wondering when you’d stop the act,” said Vanya with a crook in his lip. “Give me your best.”   
  
For a few passionate exhales, Rickie stood there with nothing to say. It infuriated her beyond belief. All that for just a couple seconds of silence. Then an expletive.   
  
“Should’ve prepared a speech. Was plannin’ to, but got run over with work and all. Now that I’m here, in front of you, I-” He laughed in his sentence. “I dunno what to say. Still, can’t believe it.”   
  
“What’s your real name?” said Ivan gently, to which he received a small smile.   
  
“I thought I was a good actor. The name’s Alfred.”   
  
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you not Rickie?”   
  
“Heck no! If I had the name Richard, I’d call myself Dick, not Rickie. Codenames.”   
  
Then he turned to Vanya. “And what’s your code name?”   
  
“It’s invalid now.”   
  
“Well, why would I ask if it wasn’t? I’d interrogate.”   
  
Ivan blinked in confusion, and Alfred grinned to himself. “Sorry. Once you get a groove, it’s hard to get out.”   
  
“Alfred,” she said to herself in her native tongue. “Not better.”   
  
“I know,” whispered her brother. “But besides the point.”   
  
“Hello?” It seemed that even a blink of attention that wasn’t on him was truly unbearable. He stamped his foot on the floor, not creating a very powerful sound by any standard. But to see a grown man like him behave akin to a toddler was mesmerising in the worst way.   
  
“I came here for a reason, so it’s really rude not to listen!”   
  
“Your diplomacy is done, so get out.”   
  
Alfred sighed, and reached for the gloves, sheltering them in his pocket. “I wouldn’t fly all the way here just for a taunt and for a business meeting. I want something that only you can give.”   
  
“If you want our bombs, you’ll get them yourself.”   
  
A cackle. “Why the fuck would I want your bombs, chica? Most of them are outdated anyway.”   
  
After so long of attempting to restrain herself, Natalya had to let herself stomp towards him and grab him by the collar. “Why did it take you 60 years to destroy us then, asshole?”   
  
And it was a sequence. She would lash out, and slowly, she would hear an exasperated voice behind her, scolding her, and she would suddenly let go. There was no voice, and she was concerned.   
  
“Vanya? Do I kill him?”   
  
Again, no response.   
  
In what felt almost like a joyride, she was soaring through the air at a breakneck speed. Then the wall collided with her back and she felt that everything inside her body deflated like a painful, tightly stretched balloon. The room that had been so blue so far, was now at least a grey, if not a black.   
  
The shape that was seated had now stood, with the kind of swiftness that showed that it was his complete intention.   
  
“I understand that you are belligerent and take great pride in being so,” he mumbled. “But this is- if I need to appeal to you- unnecessary.”   
  
“Sort of like threatening to kill me?”   
  
“She could never harm you, and you know that.”   
  
“Do I?”   
  
Even if the discussed was lying toward the side of the room, a mess strewn on the walls with liquid trickling down the back of her neck, she was very awake. So awake, in fact, that she almost picked herself up to see her brother. Her real brother.   
  
Ivan had finally awoken after those days in passivity.   
  
“And what do you want, wretch?”   
  
“Well, first I suggested being friends but you were opposed.  We’re past that, I think.”   
  
“Is your other demand as ridiculous?”   
  
“Heck, no! It’s simple. But- uh,” he paused abruptly.   
  
Then he looked her direction, setting her on fire.   
  
“She shouldn’t be here for this. Heaven knows, she’ll get herself killed- or, kill me. Neither is a good option, right?”   
  
“Let me kill him,” she rasped. “I’ll slice open every piece of skin he has.”   
  
One of the two approached her, but it was near impossible to tell which until they hovered right in front of her face. It was Ivan, and as he lifted her off the floor, she found herself dangling off him like a gun around his belt.   
  
Not the kind of grasp that she usually had, for one.   
  
“Sleep well, sweetheart!” called Alfred on after her, and she could feel her cheeks drenched with something. Not sad tears. Absolutely not. Unless you counted the regret at not having his head on a plaque by then.   
  
Maybe after several hours, she was on her bed, and Ivan had left her for good. In a room that was surrounded by cemented walls and especially porous doors, it wasn’t easy to get a bit of eavesdropping done. The healing was surprisingly quick for a country that had so recently been born.   
  
Artfully trained in sneaking out of beds, she managed to get through the carpets barefoot, the pricks on her soles almost worth the pin drop silence. Once she reached her brother’s door, she raised her hand to knock but lowered it immediately.   
  
This was not the time because she heard voices inside. Ivan was not known for speaking to himself mindlessly. At last, not very frequently. Which meant that the American was still here. She could not show him her face unless she was looking for her brother to be destroyed.   
  
Instead, she looked through the unusually high bottom of the door, her back screaming as she did.   
  
They seemed to not be talking, but Alfred’s head was high enough to face her brother at the perfect angle. If superpowers dealt with their business with a staring contest, then she was partially intrigued, and more so, confused. Out of nowhere, like a little explosion, there was sound.   
  
“Man, Nixon was the worst. He got me into so much trouble.”   
  
“I doubt Reagan was better.”   
  
“He was, he was! Used to let me play pool in his office.”   
  
It was impossible to see her brother’s face, no matter how she slithered along the bottom of the door. At best, she would see the sides of his shoulders. They looked a little lower than usual, but she had never been a good judge of body language.   
  
With every passing word, she became convinced that she had dreamed up everything that happened before. They talked like friends, or at best, cousins that hadn’t met for years. A little lilt to both of their voices. After a small tangent about Gorbachev and some jokes about the unmentioned birthmark, there was a short, soft pause, filled in by the street.   
  
The honking had never sounded so nice.   
  
“Now can we move on to the best part? The ice ain’t just broken, it’s melted.”   
  
More tire rumbles and sounds of unloading. The feet of Ivan’s chair moved, as she could see from between the States’ feet. The former’s army boots slinked away from their positions and were immediately obscured by a dresser. With a groan barely at the back of her throat, she shifted her position, pressing against the door a little firmly.   
  
It creaked. Mother of God, it creaked.   
  
Just as there was a shuffling of cloth, there was a quickly uttered, “Hang on.”   
  
She had a fleeting thought of running away, but just as her knees and hands began to scuttle backwards, the door opened, and he stood. He.   
  
“God, you scared the shit outta me. You heal fast, don't cha!”   
  
Everything about him physically pained her. That smile from a joke she hadn’t heard, that stature that only seemed to be wider every time she saw him, and of course those loose, watery words.   
  
“I’ll go if you do,” she said, as though she’d rehearsed the words.   
  
“Then stick around. Your bro and I have talked business, and he’s agreed to give me what I want.”   
  
The pleasant little tunes that the street had been playing so far, soon began to repeat themselves, loop in her ear, scratch and freeze like poor quality vinyl. She looked at her brother, now in slightly better view, but he looked at the wall, obscuring all but the back of his ear.   
  
“What do you want? Assets?” They didn’t have any to offer.   
  
“As I said before, cutie, I have too much anyway. What I want, is what you can never get enough of. Gossip. Secrets. Beans.”   
  
“Beans?”   
  
“You know, like how you spill the- god, fuck it. Get in.”   
  
With a slight flourish, Natalya straightened out her clothes and jabbed her face at Alfred, just because he was close enough for it to have an impact. Her brother still refused to meet her eye, for which she was tempted to swivel past him and hold his face, but just before she reached, he turned and moved past her.   
  
"Okay. Tell me your best secret."   
  
"I have many. Which one would you like?"   
  
She had to scowl. Her brother acted like a catering service.   
  
"Whichever one you'd like. But-" His eyes landed on her for just a blink's worth of time. "It's gotta be something that she doesn't know."   
  
“Impossible. I know everything,” she snapped.   
  
Having been around together for centuries upon centuries had that kind of effect. If there was anything to be said, she didn’t know herself, how furious she would be. But Natalya smiled because there was nothing to be worried about at all.   
  
“I’m sure you don’t,” said Alfred. “I have a brother too. A cousin, I guess, whatever. he doesn’t even know that I’m here. Or that I’ve been robbing him for 20 years.”   
  
Her eyes had been wide the whole time, and it was only now that she felt them sting. Alfred himself was from a hellish world of cruel people and love as superficial as the money in their wallets. They were in no way similar.   
  
“You are a madman, and a monster, which my brother is not,” she retorted. “You are a vile hedonist.”   
  
“And she knows big words. You never fail to surprise.”   
  
Natalya’s lungs burned at the thought that she couldn’t do anything more than throwing words, which he returned in due time regardless. Maybe, just before retiring to bed, she could think of all the wonderful ways to end a man’s life. The ones that she had as of yet employed, as well as the new.   
  
“Fine. But give me some time to think,” said her brother, and now there was water in her throat. Boiling water.   
  
“Vanushka, what are you doing? What sort of secret will you fabricate for him?” Although it was a question in Russian, she found herself constantly searching Alfred’s face for expressions. He was blank, staring out the window, looking down at the streets with a miniature, painted-on smile.   
  
“I’ll think of something,” said Ivan, although he seemed to have barely though through those words quick enough.   
  
“Should I help?”   
  
She stood right under his chin, looking up at him with eyes that didn’t hurt when open. Her legs were shaking from their exertion, and her shoulders gave out a dull throb. In the day, she hadn’t been happier.   
  
“He will suspect,” said her brother. And he looked down at her. Just for a moment, before reverting back to the soldier’s stare.   
  
Even if her help had been refused, for now, it didn’t mean that it would be unnecessary forever. As the three paced in a loose triangle around the room, she dug through her family for secrets. They had many, some more tantalising than others.   
  
There was the case of the three murdered children in 1889. There was the affair with the French nobleman that Katya had gotten herself into. When she considered neither herself nor her sister, it became near impossible to get something of substance.   
  
Anything that she could come up with, was likely very well known worldwide. Whether it be the gulags or Prypiat, or anything of that sort. America had had things like that in his time as well, no doubt.   
  
Something that neither the KGB know, or the Russian people, or the American people. or anyone besides two of the three in this room. She was sure that they were plenty, but none of them seemed- scandalous enough. The West tended to pursue the remarkable, and nothing that she could consider was of the sort.   
  
It was a shame. Part of her almost wished she had more to gossip about.   
  
Eventually, though, it appeared that one party’s patience began to run thin. Out of the three, while Ivan had no doubt been stalling and keeping the American waiting for as long as he was capable, children could only be entertained for so long before they got a bit restless. And when Alfred became restless, it was truly wonderful.   
  
He moved exactly like a tank manned by idiots, his huge form wandering around in multiple directions, kicking at the air for what it was worth. She never claimed to be an expert in reading faces, but she could see his features curl up in boredom, self-pity and irritation.   
  
And thus he spoke. “Listen. I came here for something, and don’t think you’re going to get rid of me before I get it. I’m cool with spending the night here.”   
  
“Tell him, if you’ve thought of something,” Natasha advised her brother. “I know you don’t want to babysit.”   
  
“Must she be in the room while I tell you?” questioned Ivan simply.   
  
He shrugged. “More fun if she was, right? Don’t be boring.”   
  
“What is it?”   
  
“May I give her some instructions?” asked her brother, as though he hadn’t heard her at all.   
  
“Sure, in English. Don’t pull any shit with me. It’s rude.”   
  
Ivan shot a quick arrow of a glance in Alfred’s direction and acknowledged his sister for the first time in what felt like days.   
  
“Don’t tell Katya about a word of this.”   
  
“Katya?” she hissed. “What does that puny woman have to do with-”   
  
“Easy there, girlie! I get you don’t like this Katie person-”   
  
“Don’t interrupt! Why not?”   
  
Ivan wasn’t perturbed or shocked by her outburst, as she had, for a moment, expected. He was all too accepting. “You’ll know why. In fact, don’t ever talk to her again. It’s your call.”   
  
The moment it felt like she wouldn’t be able to control her screaming, it evaporated into nothing. She nodded, and slinked back towards the door, leaving the two in their space. Alfred seemed like he was going t assume the interrogator’s stance, with his hands against the table, leaning far too close for comfort. He enjoyed doing that, from whatever little she had seen.   
  
"Alright. Since this is the last leg of my fun in Russia, I think we should be a little- theatrical about it. The main event! The one all of you folks have been waiting, oh, so long for-"   
  
"Why don't you just get on with it, Houdini?" she snapped.   
  
His manufactured grin became a pout in a fraction of a second. "Well, clearly someone doesn't have a liking for- the arts."   
  
It wasn't as much her intense dislike for the theatrical, it was a delightful combination of her desire to witness Alfred disembowelled, and to have the so called 'secret' done away with.   
  
“Alright. Just so you know, my secret is-” He cleared his throat for one more precious second of stalling. “I’ve tried to kill myself multiple times. Mostly because I’ve wondered if it would work.”   
  
She had to control the smirk that was fighting her so bravely. The smallest of secrets, perhaps even the kind of thing that would alarm only the most inexperienced and uninitiated nation. Having regular thoughts about your mortality were something that came with the day's breakfast and chores. But a young nation; a nation brought up in gold rushes and showbiz lights, wouldn't know that kind of rubbish. The kid wasn't even as old as the guns he liked so much.   
  
Alfred stood there, facing Ivan, his face so devoid of everything that she was worried that he hadn't been listening. Then he showed a tingle of life, pushing back the hair that so wonderfully hid that ugly face. He smiled a big, toothy one.   
  
"Yeah, you and me both, buddy. All the cool kids are doing it, I think.”   
  
Impossible. There was no way that this child, this fucking infant, barely out of the thumb-sucking phase, had even considered that there would be an end to his hedonistic, gold plated chaos. It was the lowest form of seeking attention, and she wouldn't have anything more than a sentence of it.   
  
"Oh, come off it!" She cried. "If jumping in front of trains for the fun counts, then you're wrong."   
  
"How about shooting myself through the skull?" he asked blankly.   
  
Natalya froze. "That-" she whimpered. "That could work."   
  
"Yeah, thought so. This shit comes with the job, I think. Bottom line is, that it's not a good enough secret."   
  
"Well, I'm sorry if I didn't know that trying to die was in fashion these days," managed Ivan coolly. "I have no more secrets that Natasha doesn't know."   
  
"Oh, please. You think Nattie over here looks shocked that her brother is suicidal? I mean, I sure as hell would be a little bit- intrigued. Neither of you is a good actor. Your films suck, anyway."   
  
So many pathetic attempts at an insult and none actually hurt. "So you hear a secret, and you're not satisfied, and you want another. That's not the fucking deal," she hissed.   
  
"Baby, you're in no position to make any kind of deal.”   
  
What disgusted her wasn't the phrase, our even it's delivery. She knew that for what it was worth, many Moscow girls would fall for that kind of cherub-like cheekiness.   
  
"Okay, since you're having so much trouble getting a secret out, how about this? It'll be easier for the both of us. I ask you a question, and you must answer. Lie to me, and I will know. I won't be angry if you do," he pouted. "But don't."   
  
"I refuse to answer anything."   
  
Alfred exploded. If he had been like a bratty little kid so far, what he was now was a raging, inebriated man.   
  
"God damn it! I really didn't want to do this! But you guys just can't play by my rules-"   
He reached into his all-encompassing jacket and pulled out the most beautiful gun she had ever seen. Naturally, it was a pretty high honour to be called so, as she had most certainly seen some stunning darlings in her time. But this was sleek, polished, with a perfectly crafted grip, and the hand on it well trained. It was art in motion.   
  
“Okay, I know this little thing won’t hurt ya very much, but do consider-” His finger dances around the trigger. “That no matter what I do and which way I pull- this sucker’s going to hurt.”   
  
Hurt. As if that was even a threat anymore. She moved in front of her brother patiently, almost forcing herself onto her tiptoes to cover Ivan till the base of his chin. It wasn’t as much to shield her brother, really- it was to see how far Alfred and his American values would go.   
  
Farther than she thought. He lowered the gun when she was in its way.   
  
“Question time. No choice. I’ll shoot both you and your sister if you’d like.”   
  
Ivan huffed behind her, and when she heard his legs picking him up, the bones almost cracking, it was as though she was being laid into a bed. Now, she was safe without having to be the one protecting.   
  
“Ask away,” said her brother, with not even the spite to smile.   
  
The gun was now safely tucked into his jacket once again, and she still didn’t feel particularly comfortable. Alfred paced toward them, taking painfully slowly, unsteady, tilted steps until his nose was barely a centimetre away from her brother. They did have a height different that subtracted from the effect of his stance, but she was grasping at straws for something to nitpick.   
  
“What’s under your scarf?” he asked, suddenly distracted.   
  
She supposed she couldn’t blame him for asking. It wasn’t bad weather, not bad enough for a scarf indoors, and on top of that, it wasn’t some thin, chiffon-like scarf. It was thick, knitted wool, the colour of milk. Maybe this was a ploy at trying to find the secret of the scarf as if it was something especially glamourous. It was a gift from a sister long gone.   
  
“It’s a gift from my sister,” her brother said, as though he heard her think it.   
  
“Liar. You Russians don’t love family that much. What’s with it?”   
  
The British storybooks didn’t lie when they said that talking to Americans was wonderous. It was near impossible to forget their arrogance, much less ignore it. And how it managed to become more powerful every time his mouth opened.   
  
Ivan clenched his jaw. “Fine. You’re clever-”   
  
“Yes,” interrupted the United States. “Now, where is it from?”   
  
“If you would let me speak, perhaps you would know.”   
  
“Move on!”   
  
“It belonged to Czar Nikolas.”   
  
The American looked blank for several moments.   
  
“What the fuck? What kind of lame coverup is that? Here I thought you Russians were good at storytelling.”   
  
The word Russian suddenly irked. It was a pinprick into her cheek.   
  
“We are, and it was not a story.”   
  
“If it wasn’t, I would’ve heard about it. I like stories in movies, not in real life. Tell me what the scarf’s about.”   
  
“It’s from Katya!” she interjected. There was only so much both she and her brother could bear. That was the whole truth if such a thing existed anymore. And if Alfred was silly enough to take a story of a scarf so far, then it was probably best for all of them to have their time wasted.   
  
“It’s shitty quality,” he remarked. “So obviously it’s not about the scarf.”   
  
Natalya groaned to herself and began to pace, while the American stood and waited for either an answer or for some kind of blatant inspiration for another ridiculous question. There was nothing left to ask, and surely he knew that. It was likely his pride stopping him from letting go of the damn scarf in the first place. Ivan's wearing the scarf in even the hottest of summers was the least off thing about him.   
  
"Dude- do you not have a neck or something?" If there was a metaphorical barrel involved here, he'd scraped right through it.   
  
"For fuck's sake," she hissed. "If you're not getting what you want, then just go."   
  
"Take off the scarf," asked Alfred, his mouth a straight line, and his eyes carefully trained on his rival's neck.   
  
At this point, even the Russian statue had to defend himself, and she could only watch him attempt hs best. "No offence, but are you a representation of a nation stupid enough to believe I don't have a neck-"   
  
"I'm saying that my theory is plausible," he replied calmly. "Nations have stranger secrets than not have necks. I once knew a little island in the Pacific without a hand."   
  
"I think a neck is a little different."   
  
"Motherfucker-"   
  
In what Natalya wished she could call a fell swoop, the scarf could've been unravelled into the air as Ivan stepped back from the flourish. It was not nearly as picturesque as intended. The coils of the scarf were so tight that the first jerk sent out a gasp, and even a bit of a struggle on both ends. Alfred's hand has veins ready to burst, as his wrist nearly cracked under Ivan's grip.   
  
Eventually, in a few moments, the scarf was off, nearly in tatters on the floor, a large rip clearly visible under its many folds and layers.   
  
Around Ivan's neck, were things she had never seen before. While the skin of his chin and his chest was white, pale and corpse-like, this skin was pink, peach, red. It had some blood flowing through it. And around his neck were a series of plasters, piled on each other and making some areas of his neck much wider than their real dimensions.   
  
Both Ivan and Natalya couldn't breathe; Alfred had just learnt how to.   
  
"Wow," he said, a child watching an exhibit. "You have scars. How many?"   
  
Ivan said nothing as he tried to pull up his sweater to hide whatever was around his neck.   
  
“Alright, I’ll do the counting. Gotta be at least one, for 1917. Maybe one for the 1940s? Oh, d’you have one for Alaska?”   
  
Ivan’s face had shrivelled up under a matted mass of ash blonde hair. His nose remained a brief silhouette as he struggled to piece together the scarf.   
  
“Don’t be a pussy. Show me.”   
  
Natasha could do nothing but watch, as Alfred placed his hand on her brother’s chin, lifting it up gently. To the latter’s credit, his cheeks were still dry; only his lips bled. Spending no time on his face, the American headed for the spoils, tracing his finger on the curve of the white cloth.   
  
“Goes right round. A beheading. Francois has one of them too.”   
  
It disturbed her, how close this man had been to so many necks.   
  
With a clumsy attempt at a punch, her brother did manage to get the devil off of him for just enough time to pick himself up. His scarf was in shambles as it hung off his shoulder’s like a goat off a hunter’s. It would need so much darning before it could ever be worn again.   
  
“Tell me when and where you got these scars. It’ll do.”   
  
The siblings were tired. The sister wanted to force herself to think of secrets again, but her brain was so preoccupied with the idea of her brother’s head detached from his body, rolling for a few seconds before stopping with eyes dead and mouth open, while he and his bloody neck crumpled.   
  
All too easy to imagine.   
  
Ivan picked himself up, placed a large hand around the part of the neck that he could manage to cover, and began to confess, in the low voice that people use for eulogies.   
  
“Once in 1581. Another time in 1917. Another in 1941. But along the way, I’ve had some scrapes.”   
  
“Why the first time?”   
  
Her brother choked on phlegm or blood. “Tsar Ivan IV.”   
  
“How the fuck did he hurt you? Weren’t you- at least four times stronger than him?”   
  
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”   
  
“Boo. I came here for drama and you give me facts.”   
  
Alfred looked like he had seen a very disappointing movie, his lips a very ingrained frown and his eyelids heavy. In all of that, he still looked so young, perhaps just a little deprived of sleep.   
  
“I assume you’ve had the scrapes from skirmishes.” He threw away the words. “Not worth my time. 1917 was- y’know, Commies and all. 1941-”   
  
“Barbarossa?” managed Natalya softly. Her only indicator that her family was alive during the wars, was that the newspapers listed German defeats. Never had she trusted newspapers more in her life.   
  
Alfred’s eyebrows raised. “Yikes. Barbarossa was that bad, huh?”   
  
With these words, no one seemed to want to either refute, counter, or taunt. The silence was soft, not like the kind that it had been at the beginning of the day.   
  
It had only been a day.   
  
“Do you think you’ll get one now?” whispered the American.   
  
No time for anger, no time for anything other than simple honesty. “Maybe,” Ivan admitted.   
  
Alfred sighed. “Yeah. Life sucks.”   
  
He picked himself up, made himself look half decent, scraped his shoe against the floor, and pulled his coat together. “The Secret Service guys outside have had a long day.” He paused, looking around the room.   
  
“It’s been a helluva fifty years hasn’t it?”   
  
She wanted to say something, but her tongue did not want to pick itself up.   
  
“It has.”   
  
Out of all the last gestures, the last taunts, the final images that Alfred could leave, he patted Ivan’s shoulder, putting the scarf back to where it was, or at least, attempting to. The lips made themselves into a straight smile once again, the one who’s shadow seemed to forever stay on the American’s face.   
  
He dipped his head to Natalya, who had so far been pinned to the wall. When their faces met, she couldn’t even scowl. Her eyes stayed wide, and her mouth stayed slightly open.   
  
“My greetings to the family,” he offered, in flawless Russian.   
  
As the siblings stood frozen, a small chuckle rang out into the air and suede shoes stamped out.   
  
"Relax, kiddo. I get it. Some people just can't handle the pressure."   
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my fic and leaving kudos/comments! I really adore historical Hetalia, and I hope that I've done it justice. To the readers of 'a box of wood', my other fic, I will be updating in June for sure! That universe might even get a second fic, haha- but I won't make any promises orz
> 
> Once again, thanks, and I'll be back with my nerd ass on this website v soon <3


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